I Love Me Now Poem by Angela Bontle Ditumiso

I've been shedding skin ever since I was a little girl
Losing my identity every now and then
By the age of ten I had been introduced to several instances of myself
I felt like a figure without a face
I changed shape but never my name
Though of course new names kept piling up as I grew

Every time I thought I had figured myself out
A stranger would come and give me a push
A friend would be possessed by a fiend and hit me
My teacher would bash my head with a duster
And just like that I would lose myself over again

I had a lot of names attached to my skin
But I identified more with stranger, a name they never gave me
Because even my birth name became too painful for me to taste
They say the sky goes pitch black before it explodes with deafening light
But I waited more than a decade to see the light

Is it me, was I too blind to see it shine brightly
Why did the night stretch for that long?
More than ten years of night
All I ever did was grope
I was in the middle of nowhere
Even lost hope of ever coming home to my soul

I've walked through a thick forest in search of myself
Everyone too consumed I had to be my own search party
Night and day it was all the same
There were times I would stare at a field of water
But not once did I see my reflection
Was I a ghost, did I die?
Was I in hell, purgatory maybe?

The first time I saw myself was in words
The first time I saw my face was in the word poetry
Ever since then I've been digging deep
I exploit words like in a quarry
I scrawl like I'm in a hurry
Poem upon poem I keep finding myself

I love me now, words I never thought I would utter
Listen to my heart flutter
I'm going to keep digging deeper
Until I'm face to face with my soul
Until I'm consumed by words
I will write until I become a poem