The summer he clocks one year dead,
I begin to chisel my father into a shape that is easier to remember.
When I gather him into a memory for my new college friends to see,
I speak of him without his anger, without the gall in his speech.
Sometimes my mother asks if I have managed to forgive him and I keep quiet.
In the analogy she uses to defend my unforgiving heart towards my father,
she places her palms over my eyes and asks me to imagine a snake and I picture it just how she commands me: with its fangs plucked out of its mouth, with its body emptied of its deadly venom.
Then, she asks me to rename the fangless thing on the floor.
I abandon the act where the snake’s slithery body refuses to be named anything but a snake.
Afterwards, I return to remembering my father without subtracting a thing from him.
If I ever forgive him, I will forgive him this very way; with his mouth full of venom.
Whatever is forgiven, should be forgiven whole.
Isaac Kanyinji
Isaac Kanyinji is a Zambian poet and short story writer. His work appears both online and in print publications including Shenandoah, Ubwali Literary Magazine, Publish'd Afrika, and Salamander Ink Mag among others. Isaac is the winner of the 2025 Ubwali Hope Prize.
