She walks along lifelong paths backwards,
facing hell, the tam-tams in her temples
thumping migraines out the way prey does
when there is no escape. She has walked,
she has walked through flames with her teeth
clenched to hold tears back, keep them in
a perimeter where those who have got
no more to lose are not welcome, those same
mothers who bore children stolen outright
by the wars of this world. That space she keeps
out of reach of the insane only means
she will be spared the burden of having
to maim folks to the rhythm played aloud
by anger, you see, on souls of eardrums
in order to keep them from suffering, a
way to avoid the sentence given to people
who are not able anymore to do nothing.

—from a current manuscript called Mbera

'M'e