A Lazy Sunday For Her

The single mother
Raising two busy children alone
Unable to find half a minute
In her day
to sweat and scrub down
the manky bathroom.
To your pristine whims.
Today is for her.
A lazy Sunday,
Just washing her own hair.
And sitting in the Sun.

For the woman.
Young of years.
Aged by everything.
Working two and a half baked jobs
To pay for her degree.
And keep.
Today is for her.
A lazy kind of Sunday,just clipping
and painting
her chipped toe nails.
In the shade of a tree.

And her,
The always hurried sister.
Living on the edge
of perpetual panic.
Who’s learnt to make three pieces
Of chicken stew
From one drumstick.
And not distress.
Because yes, she’s the bread maker.
No.
The bread winner.
Both.
Today, the sink full of dirty dishes.
That’s hers.
A lazy Sunday.
Doing nothing.

For the mother,
Daily kept busy at covering up.
Her unexpected joblessness.
Wearing it over and over,
in threadbare dignity.
Averting your mean spirited judgement
Of living in her unfinished dream home.
Where, every May winter moves in.
uninvited.
And settles itself fat and cold.
On gravel floors,
Un-plastered walls.
Today’s lonely, dust free broomstick is her
lazy Sunday.

And so you see,
How your very many slurs
Of disorder.
Wait, instability.
All those other churls.
Chortling too.
About her different kinds of mess.
Is how life
Has refused to let her be
Everything
She imagined
For all of her many selves.
Including
A woman
with a very little bit of some laziness.
In her Sundays.

(C) Isabella Matambanadzo – April 25, 2021 (*written on a Sunday).

(By Isabella Matambanadzo)

(Image Credit: Naume Chaota / National Gallery of Zimbabwe)