Opinion | Another womxn is dead. The killer is a man, again. #Femicide #PoeticLicence

Published May 5, 2018

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A battered womxn has exchanged smiles with death far too many times.

All the pain her epidermis has seen can never be blinked out of existence.

What does it smell like when I say #KaraboMokoena, for instance?

Does a bitter taste not linger in your mouth at the utterance of her name?

All the 32 years in prison for her slayer can never unburst the flame.

The firing pin knocking the back of a cartridge can never unpull the trigger.

You have killed #ZolileKhumalo.

There is a darkness in putting a hashtag before a womxn’s first and last name.

There is a man who is all bones, clad in a black cloak and a scythe camouflaged as a hug that turned into a neck choke.

The same hands wield a knife or a firearm, choose your poison.

The poise in which they stand in the dock fishing for sympathy.

Aloof to the symphony of screams from their victims when they were fishing for the same.

So what lays in a name?

It surely must be more than just letters and a meaning.

The spacing between these alphabets must be an offering. A gift to time.

If I am compelled to count the moments I have never seen while I was wide awake,

Then let it be.

I am content if the contents of my eyelids take moments away when they shutter.

The utter mind stutter with

every shard of darkness that gutters.

Wrap the gift; we are heroes of nothingness. Marshals of the void.

We rose from the outside. We sunflowered from within, where it matters less.

We have been growing tall but wisdom is parallel.

Poor bliss, always taking the blame for ignorance. But let it be.

Add a note to the gift. Let it read of our gratitude.

Let it have a tone of peasants thanking a king for saving us

From our own presence because the XX chromosome isn’t even worthy of hauling to the moon.

Canines, biting the hand. Binding the hands. Taking the face and bruising the life.

Burning the womxn like he was not told she isn’t a phoenix.

Just stray bars of light (or is it rays? whatever) in another prism.

Another prison holds another man.

Another forecast predicting another drizzle of blood precipitation.

I have blinked so much this world looks unfamiliar.

The postman is waiting.

Before handing over the gift, add a footnote to that note:

“I’ve never been a day, nor a knight in shining anything.”

The main text should read: “Womanhood has become the art of ninjutsu.

“They are the true Ozunu. Stealth in the shadows. Their eyes are nunchucks.

“Limbs are Katana’s. They throw starts with their mouths.

“Every man is a street pole. Once they are lit, it’s death to a ninja.”

Put a bow on the gift.

On your way out, when you see my daughter, Monarch of a femicide generation with hashtags as shields and swords,

Tell her I am volcano, cousin to rainbow. I am inferno, brother to butterflies.

I am darkness. No relation no black.

I am harness, the line between life and death.

My blood stream harbours vultures and crows. I am land, nothing grows on my skin.

Tell her her dad’s natural habitat is a bin.

You don’t need to know what’s in the package - just know that our predominant beating is with our hands. Send the gift.

@Rabbie_Wrote

The Saturday Star

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