unwind thoughts

I watch my heart pop out of my body and I felt your tiny body on my chest, then the little faint cry come as the nurses wiped you clean. In that second all the pain from the 9 hours of labour vanished. I can’t still find words to describe what I felt but I could pause time and live in that moment forever. My eyes had never seen beauty till I saw you nor my heart beat with great love till I met you. I lay weak but all I wanted was to grasp you and cuddle I didn’t feel anyone was holding you well enough. You laid so peaceful in your papas arms and my mind took a screen shot I felt blessed I felt lucky I felt alive , I prayed for the first time in years thank you for saving me my angel. One year now and I still can’t get enough of your little hugs. Not so tiny any more ,but graceful and lively still. I adore the sparkle in your eyes the innocence in your soul. I could pause time so you remain wrapped in this bubble. Every time I lay you on my chest I relive our first time. No matter how big you grow I will always Carry you in my heart. A million words but they will never be enough to tell you how lucky we feel you choose us to be your parents. So little but you teach us alot every day. I pray for you bliss is your portion.you are blessed beyond measure.i adore your zeal and strength you are meant for greatness. If ever the world tries to tell you otherwise remember mama and papas words coz no one will ever know you more than us. Be nothing less of yourself don’t change anything for anyone, you are a master piece. Happy birthday my teddy bear 🐻. We love you more than words will ever describe.

#inkedtears

Heard your voice for the LAST time. Saw you take your last walk. Sad I couldn’t capture it for I was lost in my own FIRST.

A year now I struggle still, to separate the two, to celebrate or mourn. The last or the first . What takes more space the ending or the beginning. A puzzle I’ll always be stuck on. Time my greatest misery.

I look at her not so tiny now and see you deep in her eyes, always a battle of the soul. A tear sneaks through the smile and vise verser. Mama she calls me with a cute laughter Mama I call to you silently with a painful cry.

I curse you time, you could have hold on alittle longer for my future to meet my past. Crazy but it would be bliss.

#inkeadtears.

she is a combination of strength and wisdom, teacher and nurse, but overall she is the definition of LOVE . She is a woman……

I love my home I love my parents I love my siblings and my friends at home.my tiny room and the nature surrounding my father’s home….but no am taught not to be attached to this….for when I love I will have to unlove it.
my brother gets to love and he can still love this his comfort zone…i watch as she walked in, with her beautiful eyes calm, her speech short, her etiquette on point, beside my brother she walked, the cheers swallowing her voice. what is it she wanted to say??? uuhhh…. come again pardon??? no I can’t hear they can’t hear he can’t hear too but it takes a another to understand coz deep in those beautiful eyes rages a storm , fear , emptiness and confusion.
I am glued to her eyes yes a tear drop not for absence of love for the trees bare witness to their oblivion… then what??? unhappiness No!! this is her soulmate…… which piece of the puzzle is missing?
………years later am her his hands warm entangled in mine the same path the same crowd then the tears came, ohh I get it! I understand now!! the words echo ” when you love you have to unlove”….am taught to leave my home and call another home am taught to leave my parents and call another mum and dad. Am taught to leave my siblings and call another brother. Am taught to detach from half my life and adjust in a second and I do just like her just like them before and after; how???
every month menstrual cycle the moodswings the cramps some extreme some mild but society say you got to keep up, I carry life in me for nine month every moment a struggle and overwhelming change,give life as my body breaks down but society tells me I get 3 months maternity leave, to heal and nature life, I got a career normal office days but society tells me I still have to be the base at home, my kids have to be perfect coz any failure is linked to me, I have to dress, talk, act, do as society wants on top make everything easy and perfect for everyone and if I do all still, like the ones before me I still get degraded that I have to fight for equality. Am to submit and silence my opinion, for talking back makes me a bad woman, mother, daughter, sister.
so I level up like the ones before me although!!! am stronger and wiser am better am the backbone am smarter am the queen
AM A…..
W- ORLD
O-VERALL
M-AGNANIMOUS
A- DROIT
N-IMBLE

to all mothers, sisters ,girlfriends and grandmothers that are before and those to come I salute you I celebrate you you are amazing….keep winning

I found a new song one that makes me sad and happy. I found a new purpose one that terrifies my hope. A path I swore never to walk through. You drag me deeper into the rail. Each dusk am miles down this road. Foreign to my eyes but in your eyes am lost not. The war in me is fading soon it will be memory. To do or not nolonger a question. For in you I find a home.

Walls collapse, the light breaks in
The crack an open path now
Two in a fit for one yet crowded not
Your presence colours the twilight
No longer a nightingale, in the rainbow bounce
Like a butterfly I swing
Enticed by the colours, attached to the light
The feeling is familiar, a song of the the heart .

Shut down not dark Angel, the voice pleads
Ohhh….dear moth keep crawling the wings are almost blossoming.
Sulk not at the rain dear child, see how beautiful the rainbow is.

Gaze not at the beauty of the sunshine the moon is astonishing too.
They say darkness is ugly? How could the stars be beautiful without the dark sky….

I write when am heavy to offload some weight through words.i write what i have no strength to say. I write whats deep in the storm to pour out some water so the boat wont capsize. I write to escape when the chains feel so tight. I write to breath when i suffocate in reality….

BUT i read also and all i write is pain that’s what seems to be the best of my work. Honestly, deep down i think its ugly and it makes me sad.

I want to write of love of joy of laughter. I want to write to create to attract bliss to bring smiles not tears for my words bring a dark cloud.

I want to write still but i want to write different. I want to write of beauty, if my words is my legacy i want it to inspire to create to paint bliss that my book may not be dark but colourful. Oh! I want to write and i miss the pen and paper but not with my hands shaking and the pages soaked.

I want to write with my back flat on the grass my legs swinging in the air like a toddler my face bright with a smile and if my eyes tear i want it to be from the breathless laughter that my words bring. I want to write of the beautiful moments in every thing however little it is like a surprise lunch of sandwiches and fries from my husband that means the world to me and made my day so beautiful i think thats the meal i have enjoyed in a week. I want to write for pleasure and comfort i want to write because its the beauty in me and when all leaves and i fade the words will remain so i write of beauty that i may help create a beautiful world….

She rocked back and forth while sitting on her toilet behind locked doors her world came crumbling down. In her hands she held tightly to the strip with with two lines on her other hand to the phone text “we are done ” tears escaped her as her throat chocked with bitterness. “How did i get here?” She whispered the question repeatedly to the cold toilet walls but inside her she screamed her lungs out. A thousand more questions flocked her mind together with this the whys and hows and if or maybe’s that were rhetorical but she needed an answer maybe just maybe it will be adrop to cool of the inferno that ragged inside her, for she cried more about it than the phone in her hand.

Things were rocky at home and the cold war between the sisters was picking momentum. The gap was widening by day and the bond hanged losely. Although it was not official it was clear that the lines had been drawn and they all stood on their sides. The once happy, loud laughter filled dinners had given way to gloomy silent dinners with strained and forced conversation if all the family joined. Decisions that were made in unison turned to rogue. The ship was sinking and it was hard for Nica to salvage it as you fix what you know is broken and that was the dilema for the very problem was a paradox.

Continue reading “The🔥inferno”

SILENT SCREAMS “can i be myself?”part 2……

 

…………..I come from a family of academic genius apart from my uncle Philemon, the rest will proudly show you’re their PhDs and masters. It does not end there as they insist it’s not about getting a masters it’s about getting it with a first-class honor’s. They always seem perfect in everything they touch and do. I remember growing up any negative aspect I had, would be associated to my dad’s side while the positive always had to be from my mum’s side since they were too perfect to have spots. At times I felt like I hated my dad’s side like why won’t they be as sparkles as my mamas family so I would be spotless too. They spoke the best English since unlike their age mates during those years they grew up in the city instead of the rural and went to the top schools were they were taught by white teachers hence their great speaking skills. To top it up not only were they great in academics but man they got talent too. Although my dad can draw I know most of my uncles draw more though as a hobby since to them they don’t consider art as a profession. Come to music they are a family of music mostly gospel since my grandparents are church pastors, when it came to dancing oh yeah I can dance but I know its inherited from my mama she can move even at this moment old yes but she is still queen of the dance floor. My passion of writing and poetry I like to bet it halfway as my dad’s brother was a lover of books too but again my uncle from my mamas side has written way more novels in Netherlands, so has his cousin who is a Swahili writer in Tanzania writing many set books that have been used for fasihi study’s in high school. My grandpa’s poems, set piece, dance, and music has won his students national drama and music festival awards taking them all the way to state house so again where do I get the talent from? As a child this aspect looks like you’re growing up in the royalties where you’re not allowed to be yourself but a trend follower living through the footsteps of customs that existed way before your conception. You had to be perfect or perfect, win or win make it or make it to be sincere there was no choice it had to be their way. I try to look down the line where this urge of perfection came from what felt so empty inside them that needed perfection, medals, titles and awards to fill. I can know there childhood but I think maybe it was imposed on them as they imposed it on us the third generation.

If I had talked longer with Phil that day I know he would have told me how odd one out he felt in his own family. For he was different but they don’t recognize different! You have to go through school and bring excellent results home and take a course that’s important by their standards and get a good job the end!. Maybe he desired to fit in this steps and that’s why he tried though it was not what he wanted in life. But the urge to please people or fit in made him loss himself in the process of trying. At a point in his life he had lost his dream and didn’t know who he was or what he wanted and he felt hopeless. I remember he used to hate the holidays since he would get so many lectures on his performance in school. While everyone was happy celebrating he would be given hours of lectures I was young but I didn’t like how it felt to watch him being shouted at I think it embarrassed him and this made him more resilient. With years he was changing towards them he started drugs soft till he was addicted to the hard ones too. Our relationship didn’t change he might have closed down on them but not us the nieces and nephews from time to time we would share our misery about the expectations placed before us and laugh about it mostly the rude answers and sarcastic replies from our parents when they were mad at us which was often and we learnt to take it as jokes. We thought this helped as it was our secret therapy what we did not realize was that when the holidays was over we all left him alone since he was the last born. I thank God for my siblings at least we had each other and we learnt to love each other more through our childhood a bond that’s still strong and unbreakable to this day, but Phil stood alone I cannot assume to know how it really felt all I know was he was depressed and addicted to drugs and in silence he lost himself speaking less and closing doors, his hopes he locked away and gave up on life and mostly on himself. He realized he had no place to be himself in this set up and decided to be who and what everyone expected him to be, and when he failed at this also he lost it and snapped in silence.  Not even rehab could hold him now.

I always feel sad he didn’t even leave a note and I know my family feels the same. But I walk into his shoes and notice from his last call and the conversations during the holidays he had once said when I had protested very strongly about my sisters opinion of remaining silent during lectures and letting it be so the lectures would end, I was of the opinion to argue out till my point was noticed and heard. Philemon had looked had at me and said “why do you bother talking when no one listens, it’s a fight you can’t win because no one cares about what you want just what they want you to be, their opinion is all that matters” so I sit down and think why would we expect him to leave a note . We didn’t hear him when he screamed at life how can we understand words scribed on a paper?

The last heap of dust fell on top of his grave, we stood in a row holding a flower each on one hand our faces wet with streams of tears. All eyes on the grave I can’t believe he’s gone. Our hearts broken our joy shuttered guilt and anger brewing inside us. Placing a ring of flowers around his grave it was time to say goodbye. The grave remained still just like the air stood, footsteps faded away as they left the grave site only close family remained and it was a moment of silence before we broke into a song to sooth our pain.

Depression is never considered as a serious sickness in the African community mostly when it’s a man. An African man is expected to stand up at all time and never shade a tear since men don’t cry. What we don’t realize is they are human and have emotions too. The expectations of society on people are not always favorable as we are all different in a way or the other. As you can’t teach a fish how to run nor expect a bird to win a swimming completion, the same way it’s wrong to put standards according to one to define the success of all and this can be stressful leading to depression. No one ever tells us it’s okay to fail or lose and it’s okay to be different as that’s your uniqueness and most importantly it’s okay to choose what you want to be and live for at the end of it it’s your life and you should be its only author. Although suicide is considered a taboo in Kenya and Africa it doesn’t out shadow the fact that it’s real and its creeping in our society stealing away beautiful souls. Its time to address this calamity and face it. Its time to create awareness and know its okay to seek help and there is no shame in it. I am happy to have come across this mazing organization in Kenya BEFRIENDERS KENYA that deals with depression, suicide, bereavement and abuse. Your voice matters so does your opinion, your diversity is your uniqueness and YES!!!! YOU CAN FINALY BE YOURSELF!!!

              Call us now –  +254722178177.Email befrienderskenya@gmail.com

A final look at her white wedge shoes satisfied her curiosity, perfect she thought as she straightened her white skater skirt. Picking her bible and phone she joined her two sisters outside the house and the three ducklings walked to church. Although the day was regular close to normal but inside her she felt a spark that was foreign a feeling alien to her. This Sabbath was a musical Sabbath and among the alien feeling deep inside she was very excited for she loved music that was her balm that soothed her soul and took her to limbo. Honestly it had been a while since she had last set foot in church as most Sabbath morning’s found her hangovered. It was her love for music that made her rise up this morning. The church service was to take part inside a prison situated a few miles near her home. It would be their first time to visit one and they all felt thrilled and anxious it was going to be a great experience and maybe that was the alien feeling burning deep inside her. As the saying goes good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter, the walk uphill the prison was exiting as they met fellow church members and the crowd proceeded.

After the tight security check at the gates and leaving all other belongings apart from her bible at the entrance Naomi and her sisters were guided to an open field on the east side of the prison where a large congregation sat under tents. Multiple choirs gathered in different tents all differed by their uniforms that made a mosaic carpet of colors on the bare field. On the north near the pulpit a crowd of inmates sat down under the scotching sun as the bibles or hymn books were used as an umbrella shielding them from the sun. Despite the uncomfortable situation their gaze remained focused on the speaker at the pulpit and it was easy to note the hope and joy that was displaced on their faces. Wow she thought what a thirst they have for the gospel? Naomi felt a little bit guilty of how she had all the time and freedom but at times chose not to keep the Sabbath as per Gods law, while the captives could give anything even sit under the hot sun just to worship with fellow believers. They found a spot at the first tent near the pulpit and She sat at the begin of the raw a few meters from the inmates with nothing but space and one warden separating them. The choirs sang graceful fully that time flew by so fast the morning session was almost over. The preacher took the stage a big smile on the face of the man of God. Naomi felt the joy how glad was she that she had made this choice this Sabbath. As the preaching went on her gaze navigated through the congregation, different people but with one expression. It was difficult to distinguish between the free and captives as they all wore the face of hope behind their wrinkled faces. She looked at her sisters sited next to her and was amazed. Though they had walked happily to church that morning she knew deep inside the amount of pain and frustrations that filled them. It had not been an easy year and things were getting worse. Naomi had almost lost her faith hence the reason why she drowned her sorrow in booze and missed most of the Sabbath. But looking at them now alas!! What a transformation the worries had disappeared and hope replaced it while joy stood in place of sorrow surely there is joy in the house of the lord.
A cold wind swept by and suddenly the hair on her back stood. Strange since her dreadlocks had been all tangled tightly she thought. As sudden as the wind had blown she turned and looked to her left side where the inmates’ sat and she froze. For a while Naomi failed to withdraw her stare from an inmate among the crowd neither did the guy make any effort of retreating. He had seen the best of life one could note from the white hair that was almost covering his semi bald head. His face was wrinkled and complexion dark, the thick glasses made him spookier to her. Finally he smiled at her nodded a silent greeting familiar to her and looked away. The rest of the summon was blank to Naomi as her mind tried to race back in time trying to identify the face but failed. She was sure they had never met him but why did he make such a disturbing contact. Naomi fought against all her instinct not to look back at him. She even tilted her legs to the right so she could face the opposite direction from the man. Since it was a musical Sabbath, the sermon was to be short and she was glad when it ended a little music would take her mind off and yes it did. So much in love was Naomi with music that she couldn’t restrain from joining the choirs together with other Christians as they happily sang and matched in circle at the center of the arena to one chorus led by the host choir, at this she forgot all her worries. All that bears a beginning must have an end no matter how sweet it was the chorus came to an end marking the end of the first session.

She stood halfway to her seat staring hard at the sheet of paper folded like a rose that lay on top of her bible. Although she was scared she continued walking to her seat and picked the pile before seating heavily on her chair. “What’s wrong?” Nancy inquired a worried look on her face. Naomi turned to look at her sister but lacked words. She turned to the crowd of inmates who were now being ushered away, desperately she tried to look for the man to no avail. Although she felt hot and sweaty, she knew it was not from the singing as her hands felt cold at the same time. The lady was horrified what was happening? It was lunch break and one could easily leave for home or stay and eat the food provided as they waited for the afternoon session. Yes she loved music but all she wanted to do was run so far away from this place. Nancy had already wandered off to greet a few friends unlike Naomi, her sisters were more social and very outspoken. She sat alone under that tent everyone was chatting or singing along to the background music as they waited for lunch.
Looking down at the paper shaped rose she held between her sweaty fingers, she was astonished to see words vividly written in tiny handwriting. Part of her wanted to dump the paper rose and walk away but curiosity got the best of her and she craved knowledge of the words, maybe the words would clarify the puzzle, either way she just wanted to leave. A small metal rod fell on her feet bouncing on her toes that were exposed from the open wedge shoes as she stood up to leave. Looking down at her feet she saw a rusty key, where did it come from? It had fell from her bible. She quickly picked it up looked around to be certain no one had noticed and matched quickly towards the gate not even bidding her sisters farewell. The walk down the hill had been longer as she was anxious to know what the flower held and the key? That was another mystery not forgetting the man. Halfway home she stopped and sat at the foot of a large Cyprus trees and unfolded the paper rose. In blue ink with tiny handwriting a paragraph unfolded. She read out……

Life is a paradox somethings have meaning others will never have the beauty or ugly part of it is we will never know the difference. I worked loyally for 18 years doing all that is required of me and more without a single complain. All this years I saw light in everything. But one day everything turned and I found myself betrayed by the ones I trusted and worked for all this years. They chose me as a sacrificial lamb to cover their own tracks without my consultation, this I would have no knowledge of if I had not overhead the conversation. I couldn’t save myself from the slaughter house so I decided to take a collateral before I left. Twenty seven years I have been locked up in this walls all I see is darkness even at daylight. I lost my hope and made peace with my circumstance but yesterday when they made the announcement about the church service to take place here, I prayed for the first time in years since I landed inside this walls. I asked God to show me light once more for I had dwelt in the dark so much. This morning I sat there looking at the congregation but nothing moved me until a bright light struck my eyes suddenly and when I looked up I saw you. I am not sure if it was the bright clothes you wore but I felt this was it, I saw light for the first time in twenty seven years. The key opens a gate to an empty house with treasure i took as collateral 27 years ago now it’s yours. Your bible holds the location to the house, All I ask of you is to keep shinning for there are others in the dark that needs a reminder of the light.

Was this a joke? But she held the key in her hand and opening the page with a bookmark on her bible were the coordinates boldly written……….