Naomi Cammayo
Your mother got married today.
You wore black, and I crumpled
into a ball of paper and rolled
underneath our bed, joining
dust we’ve both failed to reach.
“May forever,” those teleseryes
beam at us from the TV, like the
smile of an over-enthusiastic fan.
I’ve been labouring over our
running stitches of perpetuity
for three years and it felt like
a century of keeping us alive
on my soap opera, your fabric
of everyday that you maintain
in quietude. Certainty is,
in fact, three words, the prayer
of me according to you.
I am my own telenovela lover.
You are secure when I practice
our silences, let you be a friend,
a colleague, a sister, a daughter.
Keeping watch is not loving,
it does not celebrate how we
are our own women. Bed death
is untangli
