My Thing Is Something Poem by Sammy Aswani Luyove

Those sunken cheeks are not her own
My darling was a thing,
In fact those sunken cheeks
That you now call wrinkles
Are what dimples were.
You never saw the youth she was;
So you think I wasted my father's cows!
My children, I'm missing two toe nails
Lost staring at her;
One the first I saw her,
Another the second we met.
Now my children,
You look at her contemptuously!
Or is it because you're big boys
With some big jobs in the city!
So you think she's cold at heart
Like vujeni; the slept over maize bread!
Oh! No. My thing is something.

Your darlings have painted lips
Like cats that ravaged on rats
And walk derisively before her
Like peacocks!
Because her legs are heavy now as iron rods,
But I tell you my sons, she shook my spine
Like shimuga; the milk gourd
Without touching me,
My thing is something.

She's strong to succumb to nine pushes,
You my nine disdainful children!
But I wonder if my daughter will push twice,
Her mother says she swallows some 'aspirins'
And her husband, her husband she says;
Wraps himself in piped plastic papers!
That's how they deny us grandchildren,
O. My thing is something.

I paid a whole herd in my wife's dowry,
Her mother said she could grind
A debe of millet on the grinding stone
And she cooked the best
That none of your peacocks can match.
My sons,
How many heads of cattle,
Did you pay in your wives' dowry!
O. My thing is something.

My daughter,
The only one daughter of your mother
The said image of your mother,
How many cows have I received
From your beloved hunter!
Yet your father's only pride!
Even just one cow for your mother's milk!
Whose name your daughters will fight for,
Puuh! My thing is something.