Written piece
Where Strength Rests
Larona Siana
Botswana
About this piece
I am named in full, Larona Maatla Baipidi Siana. My names are all in Setswana and they all have meaning. This poem is a reflection of my personality tied to my name Maatla, which means power and directly translates to strength. It is my identity explained through wordplay.
“Where Strength Rests”
for the one named after power
I do not wear lacquered faces
my skin is the bark of a tree,
weathered by wind,
unashamed of its cracks.
The moon touches me unfiltered,
and I let her.
I walk with mirrors for hands,
reflecting what others fear to see
truths too raw to dress in politeness.
They call it sharpness,
but it's just the blade I forged
under eclipses and silence.
My tongue is anointed with salt and fire.
I stir cauldrons of conversation,
brew spells in broken phrases,
read futures in the way
people leave rooms.
I am a house with open windows,
a library without locks.
Pages flutter when I speak,
spines bend when I love,
and still...I remain
unburned.
People are seeds to me.
Even when they rot,
I smell the orchard they might become.
I hold space for ghosts,
for gardens that haven’t bloomed,
for voices still shapeshifting.
My rituals are sacred:
grinding beans like incense,
whispering to the soil,
pouring honeyed truths into waiting cups.
Debate is not war,
it is conjuring.
On Tuesdays, I rise with clearer eyes for
that’s when the veil is thinnest.
That’s when the trees whisper
their oldest truths,
and I finally feel
like I belong to something
eternal.
My power is not declared,
it hums.
It coils beneath my ribs
like serpent wisdom,
rises in dreams soaked with omen.
It knows when to cut,
and when to cradle.
And when they ask
what keeps me from crumbling
when I am made of glass and ash,
I smile...
I am named after strength.
The kind that hikes toward the sun,
cups wildflowers like sacred scripture,
and hears the sky when it speaks.
Maatla.