Did You Throw All Away? Poem by Francis Kokutse

Do not send out the lava of your anger
for the anguish on your face is enough to tell the heat
that has collected under the hills of your heart.

Let not my words
become the hammers
and the pick-axes to increase the
size of the crater above your emotions.

I stand on the heels of a dove;
Pleading with olive branch words
that is coming from the beak of a human lover;
Do you now forget it was my face
that melted your strong heart?

Do you not remember that it was this
same face that you once loved?
And so tell me, what has happened
to the sacred vow we took?