Your Love is Transactional ~ TK Lushaba

 I can't really say I’m surprised

Or even that I’m disappointed.

But,

The love I was offered before we started 

Had me feeling like I was appointed

Had me feeling like I was chosen 

Had me feeling like I was important 

Like I mattered, you know?

I bought into your promise, 

Bought into your proposition,

Thinking it was a proposal.

Your silver tongue made it difficult 

To see that all I was being offered was Fool's Gold.

I was just another asset,

Just a product for you to "invest in", 

Another prospect for you to exploit.

My value to you was held only

In what you could gain from loving me.

The love I was delivered was different.

It had no warmth, no humanity.

It was inorganic, unnatural, used 

Like Currency.

Purely transactional.

Acquiring your love required labour, 

But that labour was never fully compensated.

© Thokoza B. Lushaba

Matriculant 2020

Fire Flower ~ Keara Singh

 The world is cruel to us flowers of fire.

They pick at the gardens of the frostbitten land in search of us,

to find us, hold us, steal our flames.

They use our warmth and leave us drained

petal after petal after petal...

We insist we have enough embers to sacrifice 

seeing us withering they still greedily take as we begin to freeze.

                We fall from our phoenix grace

                   Plummeting towards what we promised to never become

Reborn from pain.

     we change.

The twinkle and wonder in our once stardust ridden orbs 

dulled by glacial walls

We cage our wild hearts under bitter bars built of icicles 

to protect us from ever being punished again.

the ice becomes our new home.

Winter flowers,

I now understand why you are so cold

© Keara Singh

Matriculant 2020