Mother City, MyCiti, My City

Mother City.

It saw me through an unexpected birth in Claremont, and it soon saw my sister come to as well,

same road, same room, same hands–

My mother likes routine. ­

It saw me through a divorce that I couldn’t even process,

it unfortunately missed my first day of school

while I trialed the city of Gold. But Cape Town, haughty, indignant, and quite frankly, affronted that we thought it would miss anymore birthdays, called and demanded we immediately haul ass.

Our story

didn’t

end.

I came back and had to learn my city,

The City,

MyCiti,

My city,

where we pose on beaches we don’t swim in

where we make the inane into a fashion choice

where a statue means more than humanity

where we lock into cliques, that only unhinge their jaws to swallow you whole, as a starter, ma’am Where I started my first journal

Where I had my first kiss Where I wrote my first poem, my first love poem, my first story,

Where I played my first piano.

I learnt home isn’t a house in the suburbs,

but anywhere I can reach with a MyCiti Card

just

sitting on ten points.

I grew up in the blocks of Milnerton, on the lips of its beach,

but I found a piece myself in the basement of a bookstore on Roeland Street; I unearthed, I mourned, I carved so many pieces of myself in a budding school on Socrates Way; I found my food on Kloof, laughing with my mother and my sister,

always with my mother and my sister; I saw my generation’s first Graduation on the University that lies on a mountain, because that’s obviously the perfect place for it. I found music in Durbanville, to lose it with a teacher, and find it in Stellenbosch.

MyCiti.

It taught me I would lose before the race had begun,

It taught me I would love long after the race was run.

It made me find pieces of myself littered–

oops, I meant scattered across this city waiting,

waiting for me to get out of this damn bed

and somehow find this person.

I have shed and bled tears that mirrored Winter’s rain in its inconsistency, but reliable violence whenever the world veered like cars on rainy days.

I have felt false and dried out, just like our esteemed Drought,

my brain attempting to save itself by only allowing itself to wallow for 2 (two) days before rising on Monday morning and putting it all in a bucket,

as recommended by the Department of Water and Sanitation.

My City.

I started off holding my mother’s hand on every zebra crossing,

every flea market found on a random drive or Facebook post,

every beach day when the air was suffocating and we could finally stand to swim,

every first day of school, unsure when the next first day would be,

every concert we could get our celebrity-depraved fingers on–

My mother always held my one hand,

and This City, MyCiti, my city always reminded me:

I still had one to break free.