The African Shoe Shiner

An African boy
Seen in the morning
Taking his path astray.
No books, no pens
But a polish brush
And some polish tubes
In his bag, black and grey.
Black as his night
Grey as his gloomy long day.

Coming home after sunset
With some coins that can't buy
A loaf of bread
To his widow mother
And six siblings waiting away.

He comes to his one-room house
With no door just old curtains
To find his mother fainting on the ground.
Down on her body he bends
And tightly holds her.
His mother is dying
And her blood shed
His six siblings mourning.

The other morning he was found dead
After hanging himself on the tall African Tree
To commit suicide
After being informed
By his little sister:
"Three white strangers came
To rape me and mum
And with a knife stabbed her
Because she accused them".

29/12/2016