Hibiscus in dilute darkness

In the village of our beginning the hibiscus first bloomed in a dilute darkness. It was black to shape. There were bananas whose elephant feet touched snakes of water from the well’s rim. The bananas carried heavy loads of ripeness. They bent of their old age fruit. They knew death lay at fruits end. So they bent of sorrow.In the balcony of our winter the hibiscus blooms red and its anthers bend in fear.

In our beginning village, our houses had gorges between neighbours for shame to pass. Our women carried cloth bundles of shame through them to the backyard well where they would wash our shame.

Mercifully now there are no cloth bundles with maps of our shame.