Sir Tama asked what we wanted.
Ahmed said, Money,
millions and millions of it.
I counted it in sugar: ten bags, maybe.
And I wanted sugar on my tongue,
and my grandfather’s house.
What is sweeter than home?

Ahmed’s bag was heavy.
I have grown strong on other people’s weight.
The keg, the garden, the windows, the floor:
each one a coin posted home,
each coin a brick on the road to school,
to the white coat, the lab,
the clean hands of a doctor.

“Bawa na,” Madam calls me.
My slave.
A word I once took for my name.
Then the crystal case fell,
and the floor bloomed with glass.
The lashes that followed
learned my back by heart.

You burnt Ahmed’s dress.
I didn’t, Madam.
Her fury branded me
with a dressing iron’s mercy.
Then she cut my pay,
and the road to school grew longer.
When Mama called, my pain went quiet
to make room for the cough in her chest.
Don’t worry, Rhama. It will be okay.
If I had sugar, maybe it would not have hurt so bad.

That night I could not write the alphabet.
My tears soaked the 10/10 Sir Tama gave me.
One was swept away, and zero remained.
I broke the pencil. I tore the page.
I screamed in my throat.
I counted my scars:
One, for the red thorn flower I cut.
Two, for the sugar I tried to lick.
Three, for Ahmed’s book I dared to read.
Four, for the laundry left out
to meet the mercy of the rain.
And five, five…

Ahmed was born with a silver spoon.
Perhaps mine was wood.
Madam says wood cannot shine in a silver world
It can only burn.

Perhaps next time
I will be born with a silver spoon,
So I finally taste sugar.

 

 

 

 

 

Image by Savany from Getty Images Signature