You are a boy with no voice

Yet you keep speaking upon us

You are a boy with no feet

Yet you keep wandering away from us

Come back here

Hear us say who you are

Before we demand to hear you say

Ameen

It’s another night again

Shayo is cold

And his silence is crowded

He’s been thinking about ending it all

The long days pour themselves endlessly on us

Too broken to allow us be who we exist to be

How do I gather enough music

To tell Muhammad

That his life comes with a freedom he does not own

That he is born to wear someone else’s reality

Dress in their socks and shoes

Then spray their perfume all over him

A disguise that the market women will price like tomatoes

They will call him

A woman with a man’s erection

And the school boys

He’d want to play batons with

They will throw sand in his sandwich

Mimic the way his hips sway on the walk home

Tell him who he is

Before he knows it himself

His mother will raise her hands on her head

Out of shame

She’ll say “this child will be the end of me”

The next morning

She will pour the concoction the Imam brewed

Shove its entirety roughly in his cracked lips

Ask him if his inside textures have changed

Then uncle Ensa

Will whip his backside

With a reflection meant to retain him over the years

Condition him to be man-like

Like him

A man with no child

Who bruises his woman into silence

Shayo

Shayoo

Shayoooo

How many times have I called you?

Listen

I’ll pray and beat it out of you if I must

You will not sermon shame into this compound

The neighbours must not witness us

By your wounds

God forbid your ruinations drag us

By our lotioned legs

You know how to call shame by its first name

And invite her to sit on our clean sheets

To spill on our good reputation

Those white men and their movies you like to watch

Don’t let them colonise you

Do you hear me

Do I hear you say Ameen

It’s another night again

Shayo is cold

And his silence is crowded

He’s been thinking about ending it all

The long days that pour themselves endlessly on us

To broken to allow us be who we exist

I know pain very well

I blink, and it comes running

It blooms in my blood like peonies

Slices through the heart

Leaves loose ends stranded

Retires its wounds and healings on all that I touch

When I look into the mirror

I see myself

With its vicious face

Drooling and drooling its endless aches

Across my silky sheets

And Joy

Joy, and all the thief she is

I wouldn’t accuse her, but I know her too well

She steals herself away from others

Then circles back

To points a finger at me

For not going out of myself to comfort her

Tell me

How can I save myself

Without a trace

A spill

A giggle

A last name

A poem

A footprint

From the neighbourhood boys

With their sharp tongues

And sharper tools on my back

How can I live this life

And not leave a souvenir

Of ever having to exist

Here