Our swollen lungs

Oxygen

Our grace and walks

At places where jacarandas kiss

Our callouses

We neck our stiffness

And eye the backs of our heads

With visions

For soulfalls,

And pitfalls

For the enchanted

Each and everyone of us

Is a garden

We weed or bloom

With every rainfall

Etude is attitude

but you:

had you told us this last greeting,

i would have run into the veld

where mysterious flowers grow

like African stories

to find that bloom

that replacement of the tulip

so that your grave be tomb

for your breath to carve tenacious tales

on the walls of caves

soft like thyme

long after time

Sandile Dikeni