For you, Vava – Gitan Djeli
For you, Vava Our illusion in five acts –– Thank you for opening the universe, Muthe It is the cosmos that aligned our planets, Vava Particles of a grander universe we are atoms of the same molecule, sparks of the same life tramping away our mortal bodies Like the dragonflies we imagine on the beach –– Dragonflies have existed in the myth of our togetherness, my pearl when we stare in the depth of the horizon we see the souls of our ancestors manifesting themselves But I worry, what if we fall in the abyss? –– Haven’t we already, Vava? the intimacy and the distance the brokenness and the madness the voices in the nightmares There is nothing left of our lucidity except your anxiety of introspection –– Like Hamlet, I am tormented and the darkness of my past awakes the meaninglessness and the delusion I feel the kiss of Death on my forehead and I can’t sleep away my fears We have to part for the sake of my sanity –– Cruelty is your pathological condition you speak from privilege and close the universe with such brutal honesty but I can’t be Ophelia and drown in the disillusion of our folly Let us be for another life, maybe.
Gitan Djeli is a London-based Mauritian writer and researcher in cultural studies. Her poems appear in Adda, Poetry, Amberflora and in the anthology We Mark Your Memory by Commonwealth Writers.