Impressions

For the growing round moon:

two thousand words

from bitterness to clarity:

then until now

what did I know as a little girl

crawling through chicken-feet huts

my upper lip swollen and bloody

she said I had to tell

I just fell

she beat me so terribly

one day I had to sit for hours

with her boiled beans 

after a Sunday service

crying all afternoon

into the evening

always the mental disorder, the cruelty in her

her sexual assaults on me, for years

and all the years thereafter:

my post-traumatic damage

I know it's hard to believe

but the damage is deep in me

it lies widely spread around me

because also:

in Lyttelton church, Grandpa Rotten

sexual abuser of little girls

his terrifying penis in full erection

was carried in and deflated

dried up and carried out

dad of my dad, where is he now?

father's father was finally 

driven away

.

married, well off, I give and I give

tiramisu and trifle

funeral lamb stews

so thirsty for my own river stream

along with the rainbow in motion

flowing into the great ocean

.

but with breast cancer, I accepted death 

and with a new zest for life

I began a time in chemo blood

.

what good was it, all my trying

there was clearly something 

seriously wrong with me

they seemed to have seen 

that I suffer from anxiety

but I tried again, I worked hard

but again, I was worked out

they must have known 

that I’ve started to write

but they left me just like that 

without money, without a job

blocking my every attempt 

to start working again

a gruelling humiliation that went on and on

with suicidal thoughts in death wishes

for years and years

the deep fall into . depression .

my psyche was now becoming a state clinic

with all those defeated case studies

I swallowed more and more

death

dehydrated, starved, with no strength

grateful for Helen Joseph public hospital's 

tough heart beat and tough tripe meat

where women of our country 

gave me fresh Cape fruit salad

Indian curry mushroom sandwiches

"Never again, you hear! 

To Church and Bible support. 

Go!”

I nod, but I think, no, for me

there are no worse psychological methods 

than that

.

then I felt it was all for nothing

there I was still drifting 

in the nothing

writing in my scribbles

that I was always so honest

an honourable type

speaking, typing the pure golden truth

but then I dream my niece is yelling at me

that I am the biggest liar that exists

that the world can read me with my blasphemy

I must be careful  what I say

she forgot to say her Jesus 

can read me

I think

can he?
I do not think so

I actually know so and as I’ve written and said

I’ve made my peace with that and with death

now quite a while ago

we enjoy the many daily joys

the life in all the girls and all the boys

with their wonderful playful adult toys

.

I have often dreamed of sisters, brother, friends

uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews

colleagues, the old woman

even my dad

and they all yell at me

that I lie, they threaten me with

uhm, probably civil litigation

whatever that may be

these nightmares, but

I let it go hm, I go on

because I wrote 

my book of memories 

full

because I was perishing

because the damage 

is deep inside me

it lies widely spread

all around me

in the world

around every sea

.

in 2014

I was the throwaway Labrador-mother

who expected bugger-all crusts or dog bone

a woman full of sorrow who squats 

and bites a half-rotten grade zero apple

old tuna and rice from my dead kitchen 

makes me vomit on the street

I walk far to the mental health clinic

my tummy goes

my pants are flowing brown

my feet burning, burning

exhausted, defeated

from zero to nothing to nowhere

I sell all my things for food and for wine

fried chicken, thick potato slices with salt 

with oil cheap-cheap dirty cheap:

made with love

I desperately carry my poor depression

in the eyes of the dry porridge morning

my legs are thick black ironwood, I fall

with my oil-fish stomach on the gravel

I hear my children calling in a gas cloud

they lift me, lift me, lift me up

I find work again, healthy

with salad, I rise again

stronger now am I on my way to myself

with Amalathae, my cloud sylph 

from the historical province of Champagne 

in the Grand Est region

of France

my air breeze in waking hours 

between nothingness and dreams

and the subconscious that comes out 

when ice starts to melt in water streams

through forest trees where sunlight gleams

.

but, I lost everything again

very hungry 

no money

I stole frozen Boerewors from that man's house

my work buried, frozen, blocked, beware!

don't, for the sake of truth and reconciliation

Annora! do not! bouleversé the Boers!

by possessed stallions of the far right goodness

I was properly reigned in, but we ride!

the hooves thunder! 

I don't fall off, come wind! blow wild!

we fly!

me? bullshitting the Boere?

never hm! not even in verse

I do not enjoy upsetting them

nope sirree!

😋

we give sugar to the saved

we give giant red apples 

to all those special

rescued horses

to all the rejected, humiliated gay people

deeply injured from here

from all over Africa

.

but once again

the bus wheels roll to End Street

and once again, I am treated 

at least with good balanced meals now

with teddy bears and pancakes

sleeping again on a thin single bed

my years in back rooms

have no end

however, it was necessary for me

to escape from the house 

of the right-wing Christians

their homophobia was no joke you see

.

and there, in KwaZulu-Natal

under the red morning sun

I walk around a schoolyard 

after Saturday sports

and on the ground

I pick up a piece of chocolate cake

dropped by a grade one soccer kid

I eat it up 

again some work, far too little

and I think too late

at an African school now

I no longer look away 

from tripe food and chicken feet

that looks like the severed hands 

of forest dwarf womxn

I don’t look away from a pig's head

chicken heads, fish heads

I eat it, the cheap gizzards, innards

mealies-corn, all roasted on the street

ox liver with onions, with spinach

there are even lungs and hearts 

and you know what

but everything full of piss
with porridge, salt and amagwinya vetkoek
fatty cakes with fatty mincy meat

in filthy, noisy Randburg Square 

taste our Mageu: banana flavour!

strange, I went walking about 

in dangerous places everywhere

with dangerous black people, me

the only white woman there

they never stole from me

they never threatened me

it is as if they've accepted me 

as a little odd, not all there

and the other thing: I wasn’t scared of them

oh, I think I accept them as is

and with me it is white whatchamacallits

those male men types of authority 

like in apartheid

now THEM I’ve always feared

.

I walk the streets

for hours and hours

I’m now so poor

I’m basically bankrupt

again, worked out by the team

that zoomed in on me, for such a long time

to help me heal, to make me write

my last piano studio taken away

you ask me, I write it down

I type journals every day

thousands of words about all the pain

it was probably method acting, simulation

it was all done to me

people couldn't have cared so little

but it was all so very bad

that it had to happen again and again

I honestly can't put it any other way

it was humiliating

it was exhausting

while I always, as a musician

did so well as a music teacher 

I was doing fine with love

I loved my jobs, I loved kids

and being a kind of secular 

accepting humanist

to them

.

maybe I was on a survival show

maybe my writing, my remembering

it was probably all shock therapy in a way

about my damage 

when I was in primary school

and later I remembered everything in episodes

of crying and vomiting and terror

of the child in me

.

I endured the hardship 

as if it was my own doing

I tried to smile again, be nice

what would you have done? 

one survives all the humiliations

and let it go 

again

but I think it is certainly so

that it all, was done to me

it must have been

therapy

what else, what could I do, but

become quiet

withdrawn

in thought

in silence 

in the cool air of the fan

alone here in meditation

finally safe to process everything

new psychiatric treatments

shock and hardship therapy in simulation

that is all I — for a long time — can think

and yet, it is just normal, how life 

sometimes happens

when you lose everything as well as

your dignity as a human being

.

I became reclusive, but there’s artistic freedom

in poverty

there were more years of struggling, with little

almost nothing, I was so unhappy

all the time, but what, I am through it

it is nothing against Gaza's immense pain

all hell

.

I have food

I have wine

I keep my heart pure from gods

and I now stay with my old daddy 

in this place called

Peace

yes, what, I had enough of Loss Fountain

yet, I, too, could always curl up in hardship 

in my shell, in my fountain

escape in visualization

manage quite well

without much help

because at night I feed carrots 

to bunnies hopping in green grass

like Pa on the ceiling of his last hospital

in his metaphorical language

again a child 

with his ouma Lena's peach brandy

back at Driefontein close to Skuilhoek

close to Vrede

at Still Fountain

back to my dear pappa
before he, dying so quietly, left
and with this only: 

Ōhṁ, hmm

in my deep thinking secular way in meditation
staying calm in acceptance

Shalom Pappa

ॐ

.

all is now well with me, because now

I am myself, who opens up my own way

one dozen oysters slides down my throat

now I, my mind filled with meaning

sit in the Southern Sun's yellow cream 

of a wide-open, enlightened country

I am what I missed:

a fulfilled Labrador mother

who runs happily on the beach

a seagull in white sky ballet dances

no longer screaming of hunger

from the house of Christians, I have escaped

no more heavy luggage on my strong back

I am living in a beloved lesbian land

a bunch of Wordsworth daffodils

in my hand

.

I have seen a West Coast campfire glow

a kettle boiling in rising smoke

roasted in lemon sea

dripping on the sand

a fat galjoentjie

strong, he plays his guitar, and I sing

of hex grapes in our smiling lesbian mouths

so ripe, so round, so sweet, so healthy

and we kiss as the ships move

laden with abalone, lobster, and sardines

and also, thank goodness, with the noble

Boland wines 

sun! sing the dunes

from the sun came ripe peaches

from the sun came ripe voices

sun roses, sun honey

and sunflowers sing

we are what we are, dear uhm, dyke

quite! and about that

we will 

write

🦋

© Annora Eksteen, 2025