In the dimness before the night shift, half-dressed

on a spit-stained bed, I cut my finger on the page describing

the milk you left to sour on the window ledge;

a small obeisance to the human part that wants, needs

to say, “I prefer this, not that,” as you stroll silently through

someone else’s furniture, planting bombs in apartheid

then risking all of it for a taste of the man who is still sweat,

hurt, a galaxy of longing – the man and not the lion.

The baby sucks my breast dry and in the void,

dogs bark.  I think of the choices fathers and husbands make

in places where their families live hunted, hungry,

rabid with fear; where the rich and government are

synonymous with natural disasters – nothing you can do

about ‘em but buckle down and mourn the dead – I think

of the ways men disappear, into wages, drink, sometimes if

they fight, into symbols.  Then our memories of them must be

less important than their sacrifice.  I think about the choices

mothers and wives have, to birth and to bury, to be left

behind, to piece lives out of split threads and absences,

to follow, to burn.  Every time I stand in my bones and feel

lost, a stranger; every time I shield my face in the dark

I know it is because my ancestors chose to run.  To leave

no trace on the windowsills we passed through.  Madiba,

if it were not for you, this cut reddening the words

in the dumb light, I might have never learned to say, Fear,

I am not a lamb on your altar. You do not own me.  This here

I touch with my body, I make holy with language;

this here, everything, this we who will not be moved.