I keep losing my emotions in translation. Every time, the scramble for words annihilates my pursuit to exorcise grief. At the altar of the motherless
there are no messiahs who save daughters from the unwritten rules of womanhood and teach them to navigate erratic waters. If only longing could cascade onto the pillow as tears that water
memories and summon the meaning of being. Mourning strips down my strength in silence and stillness. Sometimes, Chiwoniso croons in my grainy dreams
bidding my mother farewell on my behalf. At the altar of the motherless, I am the shattered daughter who grows into a mender. I offer needle and thread as a sacrifice
and sew injured words into bloody poems that demand life. Here I am learning to bleed on the page as healing.
Rutendo Chichaya is a Zimbabwean writer and poet. Her poetry appears in The One Poem Anthology, Ipikai, Tesserae: A Mosaic of Poems by Zimbabwean Women, Words Remember: Poems from Zimbabwe and the USA, The Kalahari Review, The Makings of Revolutionary Hope, and 20.35 Africa. She is the host of Ihwi, a podcast that focuses on storytelling.
Cover photo credit: Tirachard Kumtanom