Dating back to the twentieth century,
Coated in white sheets, longing to know if I ever did belong.
I did.
For once, I did.
Welcomed by the mud-stained hands of little lives,
happily fought over because of me,
I seemed on top of the world.
I existed in coal,
but the white was an alien.
Inviting wonders from distant lands,
I seemed a diamond.
Eagerly making innocent souls travel to the same corner,
to listen and listen and listen,
until their eardrums grew weary,
and knowledge brought the battering joy
of going home.
Flew, flown,
they hurried home,
hiding me in their woven sacks of priceless sweat,
as their mothers had called it.
Getting home, I became scribbled with joy,
until my dust turned them grey before their time.
Happily—
the painted walls became moulded in white,
the mark of a generational tutor.
Now, I seem forgotten.
On the blackboard,
on the sheets of scholars,
and on walls where there was once proof
of my existence,
erasable, columned ink now stands appraising.
And I?
A forgotten mastermind of the old.
[This is more than chalk. More than Africa, geographically speaking.]
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