Who Listens When We Pray - Series

 

Who Listens When We Pray

 

 

Who listens when we pray, when my body is numb and I’m begging my thoughts to be still. When by back is against the wall who do I turn to, when my shoulders are heavy because all the weight weighs heavily on them. When agony translates into tears and my heart beats faster by the second, a lump in my throat and suddenly my speech doesn’t make sense, Who exactly do I turn to. When I have exhausted all my options because solutions come from physical beings and answers I seek for days on end, I’m stuck yet again so who do I turn to. Who listens when we pray, who sees our struggles and feels our pain. When I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night who’s up at that time with me, listening to all my thoughts and wiping my tears off my face because yet again I’m back to this very same place that I spend most of my days trying to run away from. Who listens when my heart bleeds and cries out for help to deaf ears , who’s there to carry our burdens on a daily basis, whose there to numb the pain and give us hope in a world that is hopeless.

Who listens when we pray, when anxiety invades my sleep every night that I try to get some peace but I find myself going back to soul searching just to try and get to myself and how I can get my voice and thoughts heard for they say the most high is always listening. I’ve spent most of my days trying to numb what I encounter during the day only to realise that come night time it will find its way back to me, Make me numb, take the pain away because all these bandages do is hide scars but the pain is constant and never goes away, who do I turn to and who listens when I pray. When my troubles follow me and I soon realise I can’t hide nor run, when failure echoes in the background of my silent moments deep in thoughts as I try to figure out how on earth I can escape the voices that continue to haunt my peace. Who hears the outcry of my brothers and sisters, the tormented souls terrified to show their pain for they will be deemed as weak and unstable, so who do we talk to, who listens and hears us.

Who listens when we pray, who listens and hears the battered souls that continue to keep a brave face for the world shows no sympathy to victims. Who feels the pain and answers the poverty struck souls because regardless of success being a mile ahead of them it wasn’t tailor made nor designed for them. Who heals the damaged souls, give them strength and motivate them. Who shelters the homeless and makes them hopeful that one day they too might find a home, who listens and hears the prayers of those in their last dying moments who assures them that they are going to a better place. Who hears the prayers of the wrongfully accused whose life now is filled with high concrete walls and bars of steel, who promises them that they too will one day walkout and be free. We pray in hopes of and faith that we will see change, we choose to believe in something greater than that of which we see with a naked eye. Through life’s lessons we know that whatever it is that we go through it will surely pass not because someone tells us that it will but because we know it ought to be because nothing lasts forever. We continue to live as curious beings because at the end of every struggle and hardship who doesn’t want to see what’s next. We pray because we believe that regardless there will be change.

by - Asisipho Ndyamboti

 

INBETWEEN THOSE LAUGHS

Inbetween Those Laughs

We remember that we are human

Its in between those short silences that we remember that our armours of strength can only take so much

It is then we feel at our worst,

Where the world and everything around it feels too heavy to carry

Under those blank stares lie hidden conflicts of truths that we ourselves can not comprehend

Yesterdays that left us scared only to be revived again by thought, See we do a different kind of reminiscing one that we can't escape, we allow it to ease into our heart's vein seeping deep into the beats we once had.

In between the laughs comes joint sighs cried by different souls brought together  with painful journeys.

Its in those moments we tend to remember that we are still bruised and that those stitches are tailored to suit what is supposed to be our happiness.

In between the laughs we try closing off once again our vulnerabilities off to the world

Because at the end of it all they shouldn't see our weaknesses

Its in between those laughs that  we fight for air as we are in between breathing and being suffocated by the unknown

Known to us and hidden from the world

And sometimes just sometimes during that laughter we are hoping someone, anyone will notice that laughter is just a mask worn very well by the broken at heart

masquerading our downfalls and all

And lastly it is in between those laughs where we survive for some reason we forget and live on, most of all It is in between the laughs we remember we are human.

Poem by Zizile Tantsi