"But you will live in [Durban], where the ocean protects you"
- Sello K. Duiker
On this side of the earth, inner silence rules the grey bays
Our lamentations, and despairs are lost to breaking waves
Immovable objects are other people, but we are the waters
Waters that weave between their rigidity to our destinations
The ocean is calling to us, so we shush our protesting defeats
So we can hear our names mist and spray across Umhlanga
We've broken ourselves against its rocks so our jagged edges
Gleam in the sunlight, rubbed to humility with humidity
The sand, the vehicle taking us towards the throat of the sea
The seat of our calling where algae cushions, seaweed garlands
The shock of our skin leaving it to form a crown of obsidian
The queens and rightful heirs of an inheritance of ocean
This mirror of surviving, of thriving at the very shorelines
Of our existences. We live. We live. We live. Bow down
Slipping my dress over my head, I draw myself even closer
Look back and see a woman resembling Ingrid Jonker
Wink at her acknowledging our shared plights and purposes
I'm risking the wet of life so that she does not have to
Defeating her drowning and turbulences to free her
The throne is missing a jewel, the love we both carry
Ruling over a yawning adulthood, the work has only just begun
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