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