Mma - Tshifhiwa Itai Ratshiungo

You asked me not to make my words beautiful,

yet you told me of gods who ate butterflies gilded

with honey. I could imagine it, the taste of something

so delicate consecrated by those we give libation.

I grasp at my words, but never as effortlessly as the

stories you told. Hardly true, but gave me a mind

of imaginings I would have possibly not known.

And your life, the stories of being too young to live

and too old not to. I envy your tongue. As it slips

with distance, my ears, our age, my life too far away

to listen, I try to make beautiful with my words and

sometimes forget to live. Always at the cusp of glory,

never reaching it because I believe more in your truth.

Nothing is as beautiful.

---

Tshifhiwa Itai Ratshiungo (born 1999?) South Africa

Source: African Writer