The Sad Story of a Ghanaian Lady

She smiled as she walked on this pavement of broken dreams

Nobody suspected the longing in heart for home

Nor the truth welled up in her deep brown eyes

She recalls the speed of the flight which landed her here

Here where the sun doesn't shine daily

Here where her beautiful dark skin tone pales in winter

Here where everybody is a social security number

Here where everybody is lost in translation

Perhaps-she would be one of the many

Or perhaps she would be one of the few who would age in exile







She knows what she came here for-she wont leave without it

Her mind is already made up-there is no convincing her

She has got a good job but she sleeps next to loneliness

She knows people but she cannot call them friends

She has become too White to fit in the Black community

Too Black to fit the description of a White lady

I see her in her room

Biting her finger nails and watching Oprah

These White men are not my type-she says

But she is too afraid to go Black









Surely-when it rains it pours-so don't let it confuse you

I am not of the many but of the few

I have not come to give you Rome without Caesar

Nor my dry tears to quench your burning thirst

You could turn the pages I would read them out loud

To chase away the deafening sound of your silence

It's a man on bended knees begging to be with you

Begging to be of, by, and for you

This I told her

She answered me with contempt-so I left







Now-she has got herself a boy who calls himself a man

He slaps her every now and then to feel like a man

He beats the shit out of her but she calls it love

She blames herself when he does her wrong

I cried the last time that I saw her

She didn't look like she used to

She tried to look the other way in shame

But I had not forgotten her name

Hello-she said

And my heart just sank