In school they threw her out of painting class.
She was useless at colours, she says.
Her face is wrinkled now.
Her frame has shrunk to the size of a child and
she is still afraid to make a mistake.
Four times in one hour she asks:
‘How do you make green’, and adds
‘I am useless at painting’.
Her withered hands tremble,
she still believes what she was told,
and yet
despite it all,
she shows up and attempts to make green.
2003
– –
Poems chosen from an anthology of poems called ‘For Crying Out Loud – Voice of an Exile’, published early 2016.
