Where are you all?
Where are you all?
Sitting cross legged alone in my room
Enveloped in the dark silence of the night
Mind racing from one half-
formed thought to
another violently up-
rooting the serenity of
logical cognition
Speculating who else could be like me
Who else is trapped, shackled
into subservient silence?
Being an anxious analyser
I go straight for the data
1 in 10 is gay I am told
I cannot then be alone…
But is it any surprise
We choose not to advertise?
At the receiving end of damning rhetoric
We’re sent cowering within ourselves
Chastised for earthly love
“That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to us”
I have been duly informed
“It’s unnatural, dirty and a crime against God”
I have been duly warned
Enough salted tears I have cried
On my face now crusty and dried
Who has the time for Pride
When inside I have died
Living within the close community
and family that raised you
moulded your person and personality
Could be what also kills you
The greatest fear of all is to be found out,
Before my time, denied my right to come out
Shutting up and putting up
That’s how it has to be
Dreading the worst if the wrong person knew
Armed with intimate knowledge
Thinking what they could do.
What is living and thriving
When existence is denied to us?
Residing on the down low
Censoring speech
Containing motion
Performing my act
For an audience sitting on knife’s edge –
This is my niqaab
Who will be the one to lift it?
Walking through the same streets since birth
Brushing across the usual faces every day
Greeting with the usual smiles and hand shakes
Invoking peace in God’s name
I cannot help but play the game
Behind which feigned smile is one of my kin?
Amongst large crowds considered
Comforting, safe, homely,
I find myself
Distressed, isolated, lonely,
Segregated.
Somewhere, tucked away
In these houses
Among tear soaked bedsheets
Muffling secret sobs
Hands outstretched
Begging to silence,
Are people not unlike me
Wanting to live
Yearning to be free
Love as they see
And just be.
Though to each other
We maybe unknown
I know
I am not alone