Lubabalo Tatase Poet Free verse

Same Roof

Same Roof

We shared a roof, a table, the same four walls,
and still I lived on the far side of a door
no one had thought to knock on.

Their voices filled the house each morning,
familiar as the kettle, the taps, the stairs,
and none of it ever reached me.

I was in the room. I was not seen.
You can stand in a doorway for years
and be furniture to the people you love.

They were meant to be the ones who knew me
before I knew myself,
who could read the weather in my face.
Instead I learned to fold my heart small,
to keep it in a pocket
where no one would ask what it weighed.

I have grieved the things that happened.
That grief has edges. It has names and dates.

The other grief has none.
It is the hush where the conversation should have been,
the hand that never reached across,
the people I sat beside for years
and never met.

I was not only mourning what was done to me.
I was mourning the child who kept waiting to be known,
and the closeness
that never had its chance to exist.

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