The world taught me
so much
Just by seeing,
I absorbed and reformed
Just by seeing,
I adopted norms that weren't my own
I saw men and women being told
what to look like, what to sound like,
what to wear, what to eat,
what to do... How to live.
And with that,
I learnt how to form an image
of myself according to
how the world viewed me
and people who remind them of me...
I created a negative self-image
and I destroyed myself
because the world told me to.
It wasn't until
I grew up
that I learnt how destructive
the world has been to me
I did not realise
how many times I betrayed myself
and how I pushed through
many nights of bleeding from
my back and
continuously breaking my own heart
I let them dictate who I should be
Until I told them "Enough!"
I let them tell me how I should act
and what songs to sing
Until I rewrote the music sheet
Until I stunned them and
did what I wanted to do.
That's what makes me special:
the fact that I had to fight before I could be heard,
the fact that I could finally create an image of myself that I love and accept.
I changed the game
by changing
how I see myself...
YOU ARE READING
Black Butterfly
Poetrythis is a book filled with original poetry by Kamogelo Modirwa. This book describes the journey I went through to find myself again after the many internal battles I had to fight and the journey that I needed to go on before I could earn my wings...
