Hey everyone! Thanks for reading, and just to give you a bit of background, I wrote this poem after reading an article about the differences between generations after the South African apartheid.

I was born on Youth Day

Into a world being repainted

To cover tear-gas stains

And a family

Trying to stitch its soul back together

With loud, harsh words

A rally cry

For a war we'd already won

I was 11 when the stories stopped awing me

When I stopped looking at my family like they were heroes,

Survivors of a war zone

And realized they would always be caught

By those invisible kite strings

Tied to anchors made of words

I was 21 when I finally escaped

The world welcomed me

And I unwittingly became part of a silent rebellion

Made of eye-rolls and social media

Instead of the grenades and bullet casings

They were so fond of telling us about

I was 32 when I came to see you in the white fortress

They made me wipe away my tears before I entered

Just in case it set you off

They mistakenly called it

Early-onset Alzheimer's

but I knew you had simply lost the fight

Against the silken strands of memories

That had pulled you down all these years

I was 43 when you slipped away

Sitting at your bedside, holding back tears

Because you wouldn't save your strength

Your last words should've been "I love you"

But the yellowed memories took that too

And you left halfway through that same story

I had once listened to with rapt attention

I couldn't grieve 

Because I knew you had been stripped hollow

Long before death

The words that took you from me

Were "never trust the white man"