*[this poem is about a domestic worker from South Africa crossing back home into Zimbabwe on a cheap bus used by poorer citizens]* She clasps her hands and sleeps Head nodding on her chest Slow and gentle snores As she takes this moments rest Because she’s so awfully tired So beaten down and drained But nobody really cares About her life and about her pain And she no longer has a dream No goals for which to strive Because she’s spent too long just surviving In this heartless human hive She’s sick right now with flu And has been for days But there is no doctor where she lives And if there was, she couldn’t pay And she hasn’t seen her children For six long and brutal months As she rears someone else’s Cooks them dinners and makes them lunch Her life has been so listless So disappointing and incomplete As she washes clothes and dishes Whilst wishing she could read And her hands are calloused raw From scrubbing rich men’s floors Countless hours on her knees Doing wealthy people’s chores And she’s trying to do her best With the little that she earns But it really isn’t much There’s so much for which she yearns In fact, she has barely anything to show For her last few years of toil As she sends everything she makes Back home because she’s loyal And now the little that she’s saved Is being used up with every mile As the slow and lonely bus Grinds along in single file Carrying her home to see her family For the first time since she left Crossing callous white man’s borders That have left her so empty and bereft And at the moment our paths cross On this barren stretch of road She suddenly awakes And for a second time is slowed As our eyes briefly meet Then force our gaze to hold And in that trembling clarity I can see her life unfold I can feel the pain she carries Even though our lives are so far apart Because in that instant I just know That she bears a heavy heart For I can see the deep sorrow That she holds within her soul From a hard and servile life Over which she has never had control And for a moment I realize Just how atrociously unfair This apathetic world can be On those who have no share Because now my eyes have been forced open And forever etched into my mind Is a completely different life To which I have always been so blind And then the bus screams past And with it, so does she Leaving a burning silhouette That will forever haunt me…