Khayelihle Benghu

The Order I Carried Out

I. The Order I Carried Out

They said it was necessary

that word polished like a badge.

I held it in my mouth

until it tasted like iron.

There was a moment

small as a match head

where I could have said no.

But the room was full of ranks,

and my spine learned obedience

before my tongue learned truth.

Even now, I remember

how precise my hands were,

how calm the air became afterward

as if violence, done correctly,

deserves quiet.

They thanked me.

That is the part

that keeps me awake

not the act,

but the applause.

 

II. Inventory of What Remains

No blood on my hands

that would be simpler.

Instead, I carry fragments

a voice I ignored,

a truth I bent,

a silence I fed.

Tell me

which part condemns me most?

The world moves on easily.

It forgets with discipline.

But I have become

an archive of small betrayals,

catalogued in bone and breath.

Sometimes I try to forgive myself

practice the words

like a foreign language.

They don’t stay.

Because somewhere inside,

a version of me still stands,

watching

and refuses to look away

 

III. In the Presence of Uniforms

They wore certainty

like a second skin.

Every command

arrived already justified,

every action

pre-approved by power.

You learn quickly

how doubt becomes dangerous

how questions

sound like disloyalty.

So I swallowed mine.

It tasted like metal,

like something forged

and forced into shape.

Even now,

when no one is watching,

I feel the ghost of that discipline

a voice that says,

obey first,

understand later.

I am still unlearning

the order of things

 

Khayelihle Benghu is an emerging writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa.