lay the line down
just away out of town
another road to wander
freedom is a horizon
ahead of me
some need a companion
urging them on to see
a world that moves in front of them
is just another dream
my feet shuffle restlessly
as soon as the leaves turn
cool autumn breeze tells me
there is somewhere else to be
can’t say I won’t return
but I know I won’t stay
anyplace I am accepted
means I’ve gotten there too late
by Guilty
Caught his eye
Walking in the mid day heat
In Bhaktapur.
Faraway – – look
Both of us a little like strangers,
Though he was born here
In his dusty gem encased by mountains
Cradled in the mist
He’d since
Seen the sea in Spain
& there gaining a new life
Lost some of the old
the cold mornings when he’d run laps around the pokhari with the other boys. One was always fastest – ran two times around before he could finish one.
We sit at its side now, smoking our cigarettes,
& I can’t tell how he feels
when he says that the children playing in the streets
Are foreign to him now.
by Aoife Higgins
bright splashes of sound and smell laugh
in my face as I drag
a finger through the dusty residue of last night’s
dreams
thoughts reaching eagerly for the edge of our windowsill
voices ring through my sister’s room and
small feet
chase the goats of Rue 3
I stick out my tongue because the air
is warm and salty and I
am glad to be alive
my feet find their way to the kitchen
and I smile up at a dripping face
“here”
I wriggle my hips into the skirt held out for me
stiff
with the sun and wind of Harmattan
the trucks begin to arrive
shouting hello to the watchman and we run
bare feet slapping across the cement, skidding
to a stop in the sudden sand
as I sneak a look behind me
before ducking through the doors
whip the willow
is new for us but the music
is already in our veins
so we listen our way into the patterns on the floor
rhythm
pulling the room in dizzy circles
lock elbows and spin faster
crooked
grin
we could dance
all night
later
the roof is a breathless
purple
leaning out over the courtyard, the moon
is nowhere to be found
quiet footsteps
pad on the stairs
I turn around and you point
so we look up at the sky and
pick a star to wish on
…
an alarm clock rings in the distance
my eyes fly open
groping for the mosquito net
and I turn my face towards the window, but there’s a wall
instead
confused snow
drifting quietly
to the ground outside
a new window
over there
I am lost and this must be
Minnesota
by Kekelime
we are done writing
for this summer
our words
trickled out in cautious hope
as she wove the squirrels into our story
and he stood, refusing to let another person leave.
I traced the interstate with two fingers
in the misty glass, and
again in the small oval that was my window
three planes later
I’m rolling down a mountain on my hands and
knees
a small red dot waits on my screen.
sleep well, banana.
by Kekelime
my memories, they are not of Ethiolo
of small feet winding
down a dusty path to a water-well worn
with the chatter of women, girls I used to know
I can’t see the dirt, red against your ankles
hear the call of buckets to one another
sloshing in the sway of hips
flip flops mingled in the early morning light
I remember knives flying
tongues sliding
across the smooth expanse of the language we shared
stretched through our fingers as peppers danced, green
into your pan
the screech of a wheelbarrow
bare feet slapped
across the bricks, padded
through the sand
I remember
sticky heat, and
breeze through my hair
waves lapping
against a shore that curves into the distance
lost blue in a city sky
by Kekelime
it’s a funny sort of feeling
of longing for places
you know you cannot return to
and even if you could
it wouldn’t be the same.
it’s a funny sort of feeling
to dream of a life you once had
one where every bit of you
almost
wished you were somewhere else
(far away)
that you could start over again
and then you wake up and find that
you got your wish
and you are no happier
it’s a funny sort of feeling
wishing you could turn back time
relive part of your life
just so you could have what you used to but
you know you can’t
because Time has only one Master
it’s a funny sort of feeling
when you start to forget
and eventually all you have left of places you once knew like the back of your hand are
bits and pieces of sound and smell
fragments of faces and wisps of songs you used to listen to every day but now
now you can’t stand to anymore because all you hear is
everything you used to have
by Africameleon
it wasn’t perfect
no, far from it
but we somehow found perfection
through wakeup calls and
muddy afternoons
through endless nights and
sleepy skies
through glowing embers and
fiery grins
and the pitchblack sky
raining streaks of colour
chaos intertwining with
shouts of glee
and falling asleep to floating circlets of colour
and the biting cold
to muffled giggles and whispered:
‘nights
it wasn’t perfect, no
but it was perfecter than I could’ve
ever asked for
by Africameleon
There is not enough time.
There is never enough time
From the moment we meet
I am thinking of the end; maybe
Because I have done this before
I’ve done this too many times before
And every ending is too soon so
There are two choices in response to that truth.
Courage or cowardice, love or fear,
Connection or solitude.
I have never claimed to be courageous,
But I’m trying.
Dear God I’m trying and it’s harder
Than I thought it would be…
There is not going to be enough time
For me to love you in
And the coward in me says don’t try
But the image of God in my soul
Says otherwise.
So I’m trying.
by Ghanaperu
There will be no trace
of me, here
after I have left
The colours of my paintings on the walls
are not stains
the laughter of the memories
won’t stay forever
and everything that ever made this
space mine
is transportable
I knew enough when I came here
to plan it this way
So you’re standing at the door
smiling for the hope of a future
but I
can feel the suitcase handle in my fingers
and I don’t remember myself
anymore
Does that make me
a bad person?
If I have shuttered my mind
and heart and soul,
folded my memories away into dusty boxes
and stacked them in the back
of the attic, is that
weakness?
All I know is
you have never left
like how I have left
and you can’t understand –
impermanence flows through
my veins as the very blood of my only hope
for survival
So I will smile and wave
at you in the doorway
and gather up my belongings
to carry myself away in
I can never return
because
nothing is ever the same again
by Ghanaperu
I’m going back.
Staring at the paper in my
hands, all is dark around me except
this one fact.
I’m going back.
Did I choose this?
Do I want this?
My sister grins, wide and knowledgeable
as if this choice will define
the joy of my future.
I don’t think I meant to choose this.
But how could she know? For her
it is home and light and safety, nothing
dark in her history.
In the dark of the evening, all
the memories return like shadows and ghosts
slamming through the walls around me
and I have nothing to say to them, so
my eyes are tightly shut as if that will help…
Am I going crazy?
Fighting against things that aren’t even here…
I’m going back.
There is no choice now, not anymore. Only
the plane tickets in my hand
and the excitement of my friends
and the look in my sister’s eyes
when she tells me she is glad.
I think, I tell her carefully,
I think I’d rather die.
by Ghanaperu