Mother Africa

by Amy Ekins

I’m moving to a place of closely weaved harmonies
and wide vowels, where the sun is always yellow as the earth,
and the rhythms are beaten out on trees
and stones
and the heads of small children with large smiles.

I’m carrying myself there with the off-rhythm taps
I make beneath my desk with Toms.
I’m taking off my cardigan, and tying up my hair,
and picturing myself wrapped in fabrics with hand-pressed patterns.

I’m shifting one shoulder up and down as the radio dances,
kicking up dust behind me, and planning out the injections.
And then?

And then I’m pricked with a paperclip realisation that the dust is not
the radio come to life, but the cleaner behind me.

The sun is gone, and the space is grey anew.