I left my farmland,
A place where the sun scorched dreams,
Where every breath was a battle,
And hope faded like the last light of dusk.
I chased the dreams of greener farmlands,
Carrying my family’s hopes in quivering hands.
But now, the earth where I stood splits,
And in the cracks, my spirit sits.
Gboko’s shadow follows me still,
A haunting whisper, a distant chill.
Did I run for freedom or flee the past?
A question with no answer, yet vast.
But here,
The walls speak a different language,
But the sorrow is the same.
In this greener farmland,
I’ve found a new prison,
Not made of hunger or poverty,
But of iron bars and cold, concrete floors.
They say this journey leads to truth,
But what if it steals my youth?
At my homestead, I fought to survive,
Now, I fight to remember who I was.
I traded one chain for another,
One hardship for a prison’s kiss.
Twenty-four years, they said,
A sentence as long as the hunger that drove me here.
The years stretch out before me,
Like an endless road I did not choose.
Twenty-four years stretch like the sky,
A lifetime before my soul can fly.
But here I’ll sit, and here I’ll wait,
A prisoner of time, locked in fate.
~Zulu