he comes like a thief in the night and we
all remember that fire in his eyes, that feeling
like our stomachs were strangling our hearts, and every
time I hear his name and I feel his hands around my
throat, I feel the bruises on my arms, I feel the
guns slumped over my shoulders
I see my parents weeping as he uses me as their
executioner, his starving lips commanding me to cut
off the fibers of my soul and become something
of the dark

I remember when he took me
I remember how he held my baby sister by the
back of her head, how he ripped her teddy bear from
her hands and touched her neck with his knife, how
I saw the reflection of everyone else like us in
the knife’s metal gaze
I remember how he slit her throat like cutting butter
for his rebellion feast

I want to take this armor he forced me to wear
and bury it like it could take my pain with it
I want to see him taste the affliction in my sweat,
see the fear in the eyes of the faces of everyone I’ve
killed as his representative
child of darkness, they’d call me, but what light could
there possibly be in a world where mutilated faces of
child prostitutes become a power drunk man’s god?

I want him to see the faces of thirty thousand
children in the constellations
I want him to see the stars, see how
we will skip them like pebbles across the
ocean of our universe
see now that we are rising up, we
will not paint our flesh in the blood of the
innocent men he has forced us to slaughter
we will not kiss death like it is our lover
we will not let our minds be enslaved to a
man who has a metal and steam heart and fiery
bullets for eyes

I want him to feel my sister following him into his
nightmares
I want him to cut his fingers when he begs us for
mercy
I want him to feel my sorrow, I want to see
it paint his face crimson
I want him to cry the tears of thirty thousand
mothers, thirty thousand brothers and sisters
thirty thousand fathers and grandfathers and
aunts and uncles and friends
I want him to feel the angry hands of God
around his cowardly body
I want him to choke on his sin

I am not invisible anymore
I will not be a man made weapon for
destruction. I will not touch my fingers to the
burning plate of hate and brand his name
upon my heart
I will stand with my soul as my exoskeleton
revealing my name to every nation and person
and spirit

I will speak the language of Angels when
I hold the moon in the palms of my hands,
and in its crevices I draw the lines I remember
on my sister’s face as she squinted her eyes and
waited for her end to come with passion

and we all will bear witness to the
newness found in life and freedom and the
absence of war
who are we that we cannot hold still to
the passion that consumes us?
we are on fire for our brothers and we
miss our mothers’ embrace, and we will die
to feel it again

we can taste a coming summer on our lips
and the time is now to open up our mouths
and swallow it whole, because in it we will
find the courage to take the bandannas from our
heads and the weapons from our backs and bury them
under our feet
and we will jump
and we will scream
declaring that

this is not our destiny, and Death will not overcome
the life that we still feel in our bones, and that we will
not succumb to the forceful hands
of a man whose heart is made of stone and
whose hands are burnt with the fire of rebellion

our hearts are heavy but our souls are flying
across the stars of time, seeing what is
in store
this is it
we will not recognize the hurt he forces through
our skin
under the amber light of this Ugandan sun
we stand, our bloody hearts ticking like time bombs
in our open hands.