Paint me in red.

Flush me with beautiful colors.

Sell me in a frame for Tourists at the Green-market square.

Cover the corrugated iron in bright beaded embroidery.

Shape the edges.

Empty the pointed tips.

Trim the rusty iron and neatly package me into a frame.

 

That’s my puzzled home- with an upbeat appearance

It’s clean when sculptured.

You scrubbed off the heavy grays, left by the rain

And plastered the gaps that drizzle.

 

Use all sorts of words to describe its shanty(ness)

Call it a township, an overcrowded ditch

Call it a squatter

Call it a slum

Call it a remnant of the apartheid Legacy

Give it a name…

any name-

so you never have to call it ‘indignity’

-Sihle Isipho Nontshokweni