photograph by Shannon Hopkins
LEAVE ME HERE Just leave me up here Descend and tell them I am not coming back Up here I have found a perfect shape Fitting asteroid To plug in the perennial hole in my heart I want to spend the remaining summers Of my life swimming in star dust Riding waves of the milky-way Use the colour bleed of the supernovae To paint murals on the sky wall. There is a vacant spot Between the Andromeda and the Lyra constellations That is where I am erecting my tent My eternal home. I am not going back To a place even butterflies Have decided to abandon A wasteland where skeletons Don’t survive even a day. I may whizz down sometimes To extract a few things on the ocean bed And the clay quarry To patch openings on my poems But I will not tell you You have a special way of softening my heart You might convince me to stay. Tell them I am not coming back Tell them I am home.
Phelelani Makhanya is a self-taught writer/poet born in South Africa Stanger. His work has been published in major South African literary journals like New Contrast, Botsotso and others. He has performed his poetry around the country which includes Poetry Africa 2011 and Poetry Africa 2018. His debut poetry collection This Time I Shall Not Cry was published in 2018 by VHAKOLOLO PRESS.