The Sea That Swallows Dreams

By Dr Teedzani Thapelo

i am adrift
a body unmoored
skin parched,
dreams broken into shards of salt.

the mediterranean whispers
a monster without mercy,
its tides are not waves but teeth gnashing, grinding relentless,
pushing me farther from the land of my mother’s bones;
the desert taught me thirst
but this blue mouth teaches me hunger.

i came for the light
cities that shimmer beyond the horizon
paris, berlin…milan;
but they are lies strung on the wind’s breath,
the sea laughs at my desire
this black body cradled in a raft of fear.

water clings like skin
swallows my soul piece by piece,
i am a phantom of flesh,
absurdity in the making
a shadow with no weight.

above stars blink like indifferent eyes
they do not guide me, they watch
silent witnesses to the way hope corrodes.

waves rise and fall
monoliths of grief,
they do not cradle me they strike like iron fists
drag me into the belly of nightmares.

who am i now
but a body drifting
an offering to the bottomless hunger of the sea
this is the prayer of those lost; nameless, forgotten:
the water takes us all one by one
we are swallowed whole by its indifference
by its terrible vastness
no echo returns.

the lights of europe grow faint
distant candles flickering on a horizon that moves farther away
i am no longer sure they ever existed.

my body is a vessel
empty, abandoned…erased by the waves
a ghost who dreams in salt.

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Thapelo is winner of the Botswana Book Centre Scholarship, Tutume McConnell College, Institute of International Education Fellowship, University of New York, and Africa Guest Researcher Visitor Scholarship, Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden. Thapelo is also second runner-up winner of the 2017 and 2019 Share Botswana Tourism Fiction Awards. He is author of the Botswana historical novel Seasons of Thunder (2020), 2nd Edition (1445 pages), Omnibus volume, Ironmantle Books, Virginia, USA.

In Botswana he has published poems, “Okavango Delta’’, in 36 Kisses and Other Stories: Anthology of Botswana Writers, Nascali Publishers, Gaborone (2018), and “Dry Heart’’, in Blue Train: Anthology of Botswana Writers, Nescali Publishers, Gaborone (2020). Thapelo has published several poems and short fiction in Petlwana: Journal of Creative Literature and the Arts, including the poems “Madness, Learns to Fly,” “Heretic Mountain” and “Lost in the Screen Light”, and the short story “Dry Season.”