Written piece
The ceasing of the heartbeat
TABONGA CHABINGA MMANGA
Malawi
About this piece
This is a poem that is looking at the love of mother that is more appreciated after she is dead. The mother is taken as a thread that bound all the people together and her connection made a pattern such that after she is gone no one knows where to start from.
The ceasing of the heartbeat
Unexpectedly
Her heart lost a stitch
Like a cobweb
We were all knitted together
We were knotless with enormous love
Sitting under the village tree,
Threaded together with her love
Served like a living room,
We all emerged under her council
Now she is not there anymore
Like threads of unwanted story
We are blown in different directions
Delicate and disposed to demolition
The pattern in not there anymore
No one knows the pattern
With her heartbeat,
She kept it all in her heart
Faint but resilience she stood
Surviving
The unnerving drizzling winter mornings and evenings
Persevering
The destroying heat of unforgiving summer
Little did we know
She got tangled and untangled on the way
Until one day
A stich snapped,
It all suddenly unraveled
With the ending of the pulsation
The whole pattern was gone
Thread all over
And it went
Just like that
And she was gone