Two Poems

Arao Ameny

Spoon   

(2024)

Cancer cells swelled in her stomach, soldiers treading

their way to her chest, a steady march to her limbs

 

until the chemotherapy withdrew from the eight-month battle and her breath

slowed to the sound of quiet air after the rain.

 

Her fingernails were painted purple from two nights ago to cover 

the maize-yellow nail beds that slowly began resembling the blue-grey sky 

 

framed by the single rectangular window in her room.  Long faint strips of sunlight fell 

on the blanket cradling her legs as if they knew what she knew. 

 

She lay there, eyes closed, and I wanted to shake her back 

into our Wednesday afternoon so she could hear the bluebirds 

 

chirping outside in the Ohio spring. Each peck and tap on the window shrunk and dripped 

to the rhythm of the heart monitor as if the birds also knew what she knew.

 

In her right hand, fingers loosely held a stainless-steel spoon still 

wet with vanilla yogurt — her favorite. The etched design on the spoon seemed to unfurl,

 

expand, and then tighten like a rosebud. My eyes follow and trace a knitted petal dangling 

from a spool of lavender yarn cradled in a hospital-white blanket on her lap.

 

I look at her stiff fingers and selfishly wonder

“Without her, how will I learn to knit?” 

 

A brief childhood memory gathers its legs and runs

to the present: a mango tree floating in Lake Kyoga after a lightning strike 

 

as if it also knew what my mother knew: when to let go. 

 

Kitenge Dreams 

(2024)

My mother walked into my dreams twice last week.

She’s 26, pregnant with my brother, and wearing 

a blue, flower-print kitenge 

that swallows

her legs — now sticks.

The cloth wraps around her hips, growing stomach,

a wide skirt 

that flails to the floor, 

a canopy for her swollen ankles.

She stands against the wall 

at Wandegeya apartments 

listening to the noise and 

the laughs and the chatter 

from the direction of Makerere University and she hums 

while she dances

to music that only she can hear, 

music that I pretend to hear. 

We sway and spin and flow 

and gently merge like pixels on a broken TV screen

until the ring of my alarm clock

pulls me out of another kitenge dream

into this world where she no longer 

lives and I exist, without her. 

 

A fickle world that 

continues without a flinch 

or a glance or a pause. 

Cover image: Tindi Ronnie, Arek II, 2023, mixed media on canvas