Kindergarten TIMEOUT (Fly me to the moon)

by Hagai Magai

Busty alphabet letters
Wave from the yellow wall
Pale blue waves of innocence
See only the green of graveyards

Yet In that sea of innocent smiles
Lies a gloomy island, drained of life
Specks of sadness crown its Earflap
Sacred land; the tooth fairy
Must have Left no footstep on its lawn;

“Mzeru,” I asked you a question:
What do you want to be
When you are grown up?

 

(Silence)

 

Be a good girl
Dry your cheeks, you are too big
For shedding tears
Tell, Sister Sue

 

(Silence)

 

Did someone slap you?
Eat your apple?
Do you have a headache?
Do you feel pestles hitting
Inside the walls of your head?

 

(Silence)

 

Who is scaring you?
Whisper it to me
Sealed lips
Are the devils workshop
Talk to me, Or the devil
will burn all your toys in hell.”

Abandoned acrobatic lego’s
Yawn into sleep on a pair of cold arms
Eyes behind pale commas of tears
See graveyards in anything green

The restless eyes cannot hide the fear
Like a wingless fledgling
Pushed out from its mothers nest
Too disillusioned to gaze and laugh
As the dish runs away with the spoon;

“They killed another kid,
With milky skin like mine.
If I grow up
I want to build a ship
To fly me to the moon!”

 

 

 

 

 

Hagai Magai (23) is a student at the College of Medicine where he is studying for a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree. He will be finishing in 2017. He has a huge interest in literature and he is a versatile reader and writer whose prose and poetry has been published in Malawian newspapers. He was part of the Imagine Africa 500 in 2014.

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