I went to the tree and whispered—
Tree, they hung a woman and the baby on her chest
Did you see?
Yet
The sun rose and set.
Like it did that day,
Like it did all days.
Then I walked to its sister,
My fingerprints on her bark.
Face and trunk together.
Chest and arms wrapped —
Sister,
They hung a woman and
the baby on her chest.
Did YOU see?
Standing there
Bereft, still time trailed.
So I chased my shadow,
finding a family of trees —
Beloveds! They hung a woman AND
THE BABY
ON HER CHEST
DID YOU S
Ba-dum now in throat,
I couldn’t hear.
I don’t know if the last
words made passage.
The motion of my body free
falling unearthly.
When my head hit rock
bottom and wet gushed,
I prayed:
Tree, they hung them on your living—
you have to do something.
Sethunya Hlobisa Matsie is a poet, specialist wellness counsellor, and ergonomist from Botswana, based in South Africa. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper and Petlwana Journal of Creative Literature and Arts, and is forthcoming in the Woordeloos anthology from Modjaji Books. Her work often explores embodiment and inheritance and examines legacies of pain along with the slow, deliberate work of healing the self and the communal body
Decolonial Passage 