I lost a poem from the fourth floor/
It loosened its grip on my hand and flew off/
Watched it mid air and thought to myself:
It's not dying, it's leaving.
The paper will perish if it rains/
The ink will wash out/
The words will deform and it will be as though nothing happened/
As though I felt no burden in writing those words/
As though my love never found freedom in your eyes/
Your eyes…
The things I would give for your gaze.
The things I wrote on that paper;
The paper knows things.
What are the odds of someone reading it?
But even if they did, they will not know from which broken heart it came from.
What are these words I spend my life writing?
I have no answer for it, except to say it feels like all the times I have loved someone I couldn’t be with.
Like now.
Biography
Hope Netshivhambe
Hope Netshivhambe is an international storyteller who was born in Venda.Hope holds a Marketing diploma and a certificate in Radio and TV Presenting. Has performed at 8/9 South African provinces. The South African State Theatre, the Market Theatre,Artscape just to mention a few significant places. Hope has been featured on Daily Thetha, Newsroom Afrika, Massiv Metro, Khaya FM, Impact radio, Phalaphala and Univern Fm. She has been published on platforms such as Odd Magazine,Poetic Egalitarianism Anthology,Not a Single Story Arts Exhibition tabloid newspaper and The Avbob poetry competition website. Hope was a Grand Finalist in the 2016/2017 Tshwane Speak Out Loud slam. In 2019 she took 3rd place in the same youth slam.Hope has traveled with Radioactive to an annual festival in Malawi. She is part of #WEAREDYINGHERE,a production about gender-based violence directed by Sipokazi Jonas. Netshivhambe is one of the speakers for the 'Leadership2020 I was born to Speak' program, a DJ Sbu initiative. She believes strongly in the power of words, and is convinced that the world as we know it revolves around stories. Hope lives by her self-coined mantra, "do what you came for", which speaks of purpose.
This poem features as part of the Azania To DC Arts Exchange 2020, brought to you by Hear My Voice and Jonathan B Tucker and made possible through funding from the DC Commission on the Arts And Humanities and the National Arts Council
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