- Vol. 07
- Chapter 09
My eyes are closed.
Do you think I cannot see
because my eyes are closed?
These blue, blue eyes
see so much.
Blue eyes?
How incongruous
that would be
with my dark skin...
and yet how I longed for them
when I was a child.
Blue eyes like Mary Lou
who lived in the big house
while I lived with my mother
in a kaia at the bottom
of the garden.
She was beautiful,
but so was I although
I didn't know it then.
Slender and dark
with smouldering brown eyes,
full lips,
and wild exuberant curls.
I didn't wear a doek then.
And yes, I grew in beauty.
Men wanted me,
loved me
and abused me;
yet they never tamed me.
My eyes are closed.
I see the bright
rainbow colours of my life
in my head now.
The red of my passion
and my anger;
my orange energy;
the sunny yellow
sunlight of my life;
and the blues of calm,
of sadness.
In my head I see
a whirlwind an
explosion of my life
that nothing and no-one
can take from me.
Blind? never.
My inner life is bright
with colour
and movement.
In my mind's eye
I have pictures
of children laughing
and streams gurgling,
and trees swaying
and friendships
and cosy gatherings,
and love.