My Heroine Poem by Mphonyana Oaitse

My heroine,
No matter the 9 months of cold
winters and hot summers,
She held me in her womb.
No matter the painful days of delivery,
She decided to bring me to this world.

No matter the 12 months of severe drought and hunger,
She taught me how to suckle milk from her breast,
How to sit, how to crawl how to stand and how to eat.

17 years of poverty,
She decided to take me to school.
She taught me how to read and how to write my name,
Under the light of a white candle.

She taught me how to,
Pronounce vowels as we walk together between the field of crops.

Self-reliant is what she is.
Not a man she has, but she is able to put a bread on the table. The bread that will put a million dollar smile on my face.

Sweat runs along her spine as
She pounds sorghum grains in a mortar,
Raising the pestle higher in the air.
She pounds sorghum grains hard as a rock,
Which needs to be grinded and milled using big machines.

She shivers in coldness,
Collecting firewood in order to prepare supper for me.
She wears old age as my grandmother because of the strength she puts for me to live day by day

The love she gives to me is like the one God gave to Jesus Christ.
This I hope will be her habit until either both or one of us is buried in the Sheol,
And gets a chance to meet Jehovah Jiren in heaven.