iv. the irony (pt.ii)
before my grandma died,
i'd spent uncharacteristic amounts of time thinking of her.
replaying a conversation i'd had with my father,
too long ago,
about her
which went something like this:
me: why can't grandma speak english?
he: because she didn't go to school.
me (stunned): 'why?'
he (like it is the most obvious fact in the world): it was seen as a waste of time to educate women, back then
so when i arrived at university
to study english, of all things
it was as though it was a full circle moment;
i which would learn of the coloniser what she could not,
destroy the descendants of such barbarism
in my grandmother's name -
only to find out a few weeks later she was dead
YOU ARE READING
that corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout?
PoetryA poem about the loss of my grandmother, in seven parts.
