Growth

To grow is a beautiful thing To release old sorrows and emerge anew Like a butterfly shedding its cocoon A rosebud blossoming into full bloom To go through the process of processing love loss and life Coming out grounded yet on a higher height To grow is to let go No longer being at the […]

Why do you brutalise your freedom fighters?

Who’s spilt blood do we cry over next? Ruby red sprinkled on soil Moistening the ground for our shovels to dig Her last abode But the shovel remains gripped in our palms For we are not through burying our dead A popular production line of girls No rest for us We bare the worlds trouble […]

Don’t lose yourself

To my mothers and fathers Sons and daughters Brothers and sisters Don’t lose yourself I am telling you this because I did Day after day an inner rage festered at my core Chip chipping away at my mental Mentally incapable of comprehending something so mental It consumed me Controlled me My tongue ready to cut […]

Little Black Girl

Little black girl, it’s okay to be you, in whichever way, shape or form. Little black girl, occupy space. It would be a shame for your talent to go to waste. Little black girl, it’s okay to be loud. Shout if you have to. Stand tall, be proud. Little black girl, it’s okay to cry. […]

Singapore

Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. For a while now, when someone asks me where my favourite country I’ve visited is, without a second delay I say Singapore. Boy, those streets are clean. Not only are they super clean, everything is super green. It’s like the whole country (from what I’ve seen) is one huge botanical garden…from the […]

My Skin

“Rah, you’ve gone bleak you know.” My once dairy milk chocolate complexion, kissed by the sun, now resembling a more of an after eight kinda chocolate. You know, that mature grown kinda chocolate. You see, I was oblivious to this whole dark skin, light skin kinda ‘ish. In my eyes, I saw that we’re all […]

Queendom.

Brother, king. This here is my queendom. Draped in lavish silks, velvets and gold. Skin so smooth, so soft. Mahogany with a side of, mahogany. Deep brown eyes and 4c kinks which forever links me to my rich roots. My mind nourished with hundreds of books, from Eric Jerome Dickey to bell hooks. When […]

Social Media Opium

How many miles has your thumb scrolled? Cheap chuckles is an expensive industry. Yet we endorse it, force it, to become another opium of the masses. We laugh at memes, without meaning. Follow Twitter beef and wars instead of real wars. We tweet, ‘tell me something I don’t know’. Okay. Do you know that Muslim […]

Hair Journey

Ten. The age I was when I began to assimilate myself for you, compress myself for you, and even change myself for you. But at ten how could I comprehend the damage it will have upon me, upon my self-worth. Because at ten when I sat in class, white fingers in my hair, white eyes […]

Spare me the b s

Spare me the b s. Talking about, “we are all part of the human race” and “when I see your face, I don’t see your ‘race’”. To say, when you lay your eyes upon my skin, rich in melanin, warm tones of mahogany, like an absolute being, you don’t see all of this. Are you […]