Tendai Mwanaka

STOLEN FROM DEATH

There was this time when I was strong.
Full of life, I tried everything headlong.
When life was rapturously true
Days when I used to rush through,
Life's unending beautiful adventures.
I remember years ago when we went.
To lands beyond for daring ventures.

And it was this other day when I woke up ill, and so very tired. My legs couldn't move no matter how harder I tried to make them do so and also I couldn't sit on my haunches. All of my right side was useless, stricken, like a dried branch of a tree and I couldn't take my food with my hands but could only grovel on my stomach and guzzle like an old dog. I couldn't swallow anything hard. I was now surviving on watery food, sometimes being spoon-fed like an infant.

Days when the tragedy befell me,
I used to spend the whole day crying.
Why had God let these troubles find me?
Why me? The fury I had, why me?
Against those able to enjoy-
All those enjoyful of life's magic.
Another day I just wanted to die.

It was early in the morning when my son had gone to the shops to buy us our food. I didn't want to be trouble anymore so I took a razor blade, cut both my wrist's veins-that I could bleed to death silently. I don't know how I managed it and as if by cue my son returned earlier than I had thought, but I had bled terribly so bad.

I didn't wish to die anymore, no.
Begging of another go at life again.
That I might enjoy, being lost moments,
Those are the thoughts that I still remember,
As my son and friend rushed me.
To the lazer's house that I be treated,
And be stolen from death like a leap year.

It was this other day when I woke up from this sleep and through the window I could peep at the sun's lingers filtering everyday, each new morning, as if there is no end to it all. I really wanted to live from that day onwards enjoying every small and every big moment until when I would, with satisfaction, close my eyes for the last time.

Tendai Mwanaka is single, 33 years old; he has written 2 books of poetry and 2 books of short stories not yet published. He is from Zimbabwe and stays in the city of Chitungwiza. He has had a number of poems published in the United States in the past year or so, which include "First Touch," "Orientations," "In This Sea," and "Unbroken awareness." He works in Harare as a Sales and marketing administrator at Amtec motors, and he is a graduate member of 'THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF MARKETING'