Painful Peace

by misspoet.001

Image credit: Brooke Balentine on Unsplash

A sleeping poet awakens,

In the midst of calmness,

With new songs of tears,

For it is this peace she fears.

For seasons in, seasons out,

She found comfort in chaos;

Now that silence settles,

She unlocks a new fear.

She smiles through pain,

And laughs into tears,

Was this new peace a joke,

Or merely her disbelief?

Pouches of wine taste different,

Too sweet to stay sober,

Or maybe it is the lack of war

That finds her sleeping drunk.

In this fifth night of peace,

She sips from the enemy’s skull,

Yet with unanswered questions,

Will peace ever come to a halt?

Her tear blesses the land

As it settles into the ground,

For this tunnel of light she walks

Opens to a dark, unending fight.

***

misspoet.001

Renata Ngogo, known as misspoet.001, is a Tanzanian poet interested in the human condition in its many forms. Her work engages themes of love, loss, memory, womanhood, and survival, shifting between softness and resolve. She writes from lived and imagined worlds