THE SMELL AFTER RAIN
Just after the sky weeps and the dust exhales.
She lifts her face, and the breeze tells her secrets
only the earth beneath her knows.
The scent rises warm, ancient, and alive
Mbira notes hum through the wind,
a warm memory of bare feet and mango trees,
of her mother’s muddy hands planting magwere in the rich soil.
Her skin, glazed in gold and raindrops,
becomes the earth itself
not merely of Zimbabwe,
but as Zimbabwe:
rooted, blazing, soft, and unshaken.
She is the scent of wet red soil.
The growth after drought.
The spirit of women who sang as they carried firewood,
who braided futures into their daughters’ scalps.
The children who chatter while they trek mountain sides and hidden shortcuts to get home
And now,
in this moment of storm’s hush and soil’s breath, she feels it.
This scent holding her the way only home can.
Not as a place, but as a knowing.
You were born of this. And it was born of you.
man
He’s not calm
he’s contained.
A war wrapped in skin.
A scream that never makes it out.
His face is forged in silence.
But inside?
Fire.
Grief.
A thousand cracked prayers
he never dared to say aloud.
Behind him, the world bleeds red.
Not just pain but pressure.
The weight of generations saying:
“Be strong.”
“Don’t cry.”
“Endure.”
And so he does.
He carries love like a wound,
softness like it’s something shameful.
He stands because
breaking means someone else has to hold the pieces.
But his eyes.
That flicker of gold.
It’s not hope.
It’s rage, tenderness,
and the last bit of light
he refuses to give away.
HEAVY IS THE HEAD
A boy sits crowned not with gold,
but with expectation.
silent, burning, inherited.
His skin glows with the weight of history,
painted in the colors of duty and defiance.
The heavy sash across his chest
is no decoration.
It is a binding—a legacy woven in tradition,
discipline, sacrifice.
He leans on his hand like he’s holding up
an entire lineage of names,
rules carved in iron,
love expressed through control.
His parents speak the language of survival,
of ancestors, of honor.
But he was born into a new world
where tradition clashes with truth,
and love must be re-learned.
In his eyes is fatigue, fire, and a quiet ache.
the ache of disappointing gods
he never chose to worship.
He carries their crowns
with a spine still soft,
but a spirit already scorched.
Heavy is the head…
that dreams of freedom
while wearing a crown built from someone else’s past.
DNA
In the quiet glimpse of a child’s gaze,
a thousand lifetimes turn like fire and smoke.
His iris glows with golden echoes
drums, dust, defiance
the marrow of a land passed down in silence
Generations of burning seasons yielding new life
He does not speak of war,
but it is in him.
The whispers of ancestors coil beneath his skin,
each blink a blessing, each tear a river
tracing back to sacred soil.
His stare is not anger,
but remembrance.
Not sorrow, but survival.
In his eye lives the whole of Africa
braided in blood, hope, and the hum of home.
THE CHILD IN THE GIANT
In the quiet glimpse of a child’s gaze,
a thousand lifetimes turn like fire and smoke.
His iris glows with golden echoes
drums, dust, defiance
the marrow of a land passed down in silence
Generations of burning seasons yielding new life
He does not speak of war,
but it is in him.
The whispers of ancestors coil beneath his skin,
each blink a blessing, each tear a river
tracing back to sacred soil.
His stare is not anger,
but remembrance.
Not sorrow, but survival.
In his eye lives the whole of Africa
braided in blood, hope, and the hum of home.
BANANA BOY
Bathed in red,
with gold lit eyes,
he points not fruit,
but fury disguised.
A monkey, they mocked,
a beast in their frame,
but kings aren’t born tame,
they rise from shame.
He stands with choice
pressed to his hand
not to play,
but to understand.
Will he forgive,
or will he fight?
Even angels burn
when robbed of light.
GOLDEN SLUMBERS
His eyes are closed,
but he is dreaming of kingdoms
not of thrones, but of gardens, goats, rivers,
and the laughter of women carrying stories on their heads.
He sleeps not in a crib,
but in a womb reborn.
His mother’s zambia is the original cradle
The first shelter, the beginning of everything.
Her body wraps around him like prayer.
Each step she takes rocks him deeper into peace.
Each breath she takes nourishes the soil of his future.
Around them, the world is green and full,
alive with ancestral whispers.
With the rhythm of mbira buried in the land.
With color and history, and the quiet knowing
that he is loved.
He doesn’t know his name yet.
But the earth already does.
And it hums to him softly through her skin.
Through the cloth.
Through the roots of trees and dreams and memory.
This is not just sleep.
This is sacred protection.
This is wealth that no currency can compare to.
This is Africa's love holding its children
until they’re ready to rule.
SISTERS
She is Africa.
She is Mexico.
Different lands with the same fire in the bones.
One crowned in gold dust and memory,
the other blooming in color,
Jaws lined with silence and steel.
Their bodies speak in different tongues,
but their stories echo the same truth:
They endured.
They carry migration in their blood.
Crossing not just borders,
but expectations.
Holding traditions in one hand,
survival in the other.
They are not just women.
They are monuments.
Revolution in flesh.
Legacy in motion.
They do not belong to one country.
They belong to every woman
who’s ever had to carry the world
and still find a way to sing.
SACRIFICIAL LAMBS
(IN COBALT BLUE)
They do not ask to be seen
but they are there.
Beneath the hum of electric dreams,
beneath the gleam of progress,
beneath our fingertips scrolling
on glass that cost them blood.
Men rise from caverns with stardust on their skin,
not the kind sung in lullabies,
but the kind that chokes lungs
and stains bone.
Cobalt, blue and cruel,
clings to their backs like ghosts
that will not rest.
A boy becomes a man in the dark,
his innocence is traded for bread
that will never reach his mother’s hands.
Chains dangle not just from wrists
but from systems,
from silence,
from the illusion of a “cleaner world.”
The lamb floats, severed but sacred.
They are the lambs.
Offered daily,
their flesh turned into energy,
their names forgotten
even as their sacrifice fuels our modern dreams.
But here, they rise.
Not as victims,
but as giants.
Holy in their agony.
Unbroken in their becoming.
And cobalt becomes the color of truth.
Of mourning.
Of remembrance.
THE GAME BETWEEN WORLDS
Two children, two continents.
South America and North.
But when the ball touches earth,
the borders vanish.
​
They meet not in language, but in laughter.
Not in history, but in motion.
​
Their skin holds stories.
Their eyes hold wonder.
And the swirls around them carry the weight of everything their parents protect them from
Not touching them as long as they play.
​
Through soccer, they integrate.
A sacred kind of exchange.
One carries rhythm in her breath,
the other carries sun in his bones.
And in that small passing of the ball,
they share ancestry, freedom, and dreams
without ever needing to speak.
​
The world may be burning,
but they still play.
They still glow.
​
Because children know the secret found in play
That Joy is a language.
And movement is the medicine.
​
This is not just a game.
It is resistance.
It is culture.
It is hope passed between two little hearts
before the final whistle blows, and the adult lies teach them to fear each other.
KOROKOZA
His face is carved in shadow and torch light
a man, a boy, a dreamer covered in dust.
He stares into a world that does not look back,
his skin cracked with memory, his eyes
holding the weight of earth and ache.
This is not just a miner.
This is a teacher who once chalked dreams on broken blackboards.
A civil servant with calloused hands.
A runaway from fists, from needles,
from silence too heavy to hold.
They all dig
with shovels, with fingers, with teeth if they must
into the dark and dingy belly of Zimbabwe,
searching for yellow mana, for dignity, for tomorrow.
Hope is their weapon and their curse.
It shines just beyond reach,
like veins in rock, like light in narrow tunnels.
And when you look into his eyes,
you see the battle
Not just for wealth,
but for something holy.
To be seen, to be more than forgotten men.
Korokoza is not a crime.
It is a hymn. A hunger.
A rebellion crawling beneath our feet.
HER MOMENT
They crowned me in gold and called it glory.
But no one asked if I wanted to be precious.
I stand here still, silent, beautiful
A statue carved by duty and desire.
My face? Empty. Not because I feel nothing,
But because feeling too much would crack the crown.
My heart beats beneath this skin,
but it beats through gold now
not soft flesh. Not warmth.
Just gilded protection.
They look into my golden eyes and see power,
but never the ache behind the shine.
Womanhood, they say,
is grace under pressure.
But grace is just pain that knows how to hide.
I long to run
not for freedom,
but for forgetting.
To shed the gold.
To remember the sound of my own breath
before the world made it holy.
I am not broken.
I am paused.
A held breath.
A still ocean.
A quiet escape waiting to begin.