By: Sekgoma Bailey

Honorable Mention · Adult Writing (2023)

My consciousness pours out of a flask

Of potent catastrophes,

Held at bay by the doctors

Of minds not at rest.

My mind is like a torrent

Of mental splinters simmering

Beneath a pool of misfortune,

If it were not for the repairers

Of the breach that quell

The restlessness of a mind

Hurtling a thousand miles a minute.

I am very much like an unhealable wound,

Taking a voyage toward the furrows

Of a genetic pit that brings about a night

More profound than a million legions

Of chaos, trumpeting my moments of loss

In a world colder than an artic dusk.

Yet in all of this there is a calm

More abundant than the rhythmic tides

Of a sundrenched sky, paying homage

To those special cerebral moments and times

When I and others are more triumphant

Than the plague within ourselves

Whenever we are at the aid of those who wrap us

In a fortress of love, beating back the winter

Of the soul’s everlasting battle.