May 25, 2025

by RACHEL CHITOFU

Hymn for the Unforgiven

The world is rinsed of colour

when the rain unclasps its arms.

Let it in,

Let it in—

the grey hush, the trembling light.

Not winter, not black—only steel.

Let go of your porcelain gaze;

I know a game with softer hands.

My grandparents,

their faces now a blur of myth,

once stood at the bridge in the rain,

each breath threading into the river.

They tossed their souls skyward,

an offering to the clouds

so the rest of us might stay dry.

The rain swallowed them,

its weight pressing their shadows

into the roots of the earth.

This rain now pools like cracked mirrors,

its surface littered with faces—

some familiar, some too far to name.

Bloodlight seeps through the branches,

and butterflies—pinned and trembling—

cling to walls like desperate prayers.

There’s a hymn in their silence,

a refrain in my mother’s quiet gaze.

She doesn’t speak of them,

only tightens her scarf when it storms.

I want to ask if she hears the bridge creak

under their weight,

if their shadows still watch from the roots.

But the rain swells,

and some stories ache like a mouth full of loose teeth,

their weight cracking open

in the throats of gutters.