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
before he, dying so quietly, left
and with this only:
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
