Dear You.

This year; many people I’ve known died.

People die every time, but for me , it has mostly been friends of folks I know or some distant relatives or those villagers from back home that I never got to know. Those people my mother thought I knew, but who, when I tried to remember, seemed to hang off the cliff of my memory. Despite my mother’s desperate descriptions, they are that tiny twinkling star in the sky that you’re never sure you’re seeing.

I came close to death this year. I could feel it lurking in the shadows, creeping in the grass beside my path. Stalking. I’ve been stalking you since we met. Add bitch to bastard and divide by two. That’s what death is. It snickers at karmas jokes, sitting across the room, behind the lamp shade. You can’t see beyond the bright spot. It sits, cracking its knuckles. Waiting and watching the stop watch. I told you about it.

You know how death smells like? No, not like morgues or mass graves. That is the smell of corpses. Death smells like the jokes of drunks at Hearts while I’m on stage. Death smells like that pretty woman tapping at her phone while I struggle to remember my rhymes. Like that boy beside me trying to charm the woman he just met while Gladys leads us in the Dance of man. I’m always with them, even when I’m watching. Daas stinks of death, Michael Joseph Center too. I can’t stand the stench that fills Soundd. That is the worst hole of them all. Sitawa is an unalcoholic perfume. Sweet . The stink of talents dying sticks to my clothes after almost every fucking event, dying words, dying esteem, dying confidence and the rotten stench of organizers egos belching. They feed from that. Watching young things wanting to be like them and knowing they never will. I only want to be like me.

I didn’t think you’d like my poetry, but I showed you anyway. Let you twirl, tap, walk and tiptoe around my mind. Thank God your feet are smooth. Soft. Clean. I was a virgin undressing for someone for the first time. I had let others touch me, kiss me, push me against the wall and squeeze, feel. I let you fill me. Gave you all of me, what you read, no one else has. Except me, but I see myself naked every day. I took my last breath the day I handed you my rhyme book, then started sinking. You told me I was good and it sounded like “Lazarus, come forth.” I’m weird, but so are you. And her. I’ve been blind too many times but she sees. At times before I do. I bet she’ll decipher this before anyone else. Fabulous.

This is a love letter. Not to you. Through you. How can I love you, when you’ve wrapped yourself around my joints and saturated my pores, this much? You are a war I had to fight in, against myself, for myself to redeem myself… from you. Yet I love being captive to you. You unlocked my manacles and I clicked them shut right back. It’s too lonely in your arms, but I’m a solitary creature. I’ll always look for a way to get back there. This is crazy. Let’s balance along the rails and reach out for support time to time. If we are caught by the train, we’ll be fucked. But we’ve been screwed since that day under the streetlights. Nairobi is cursed.
Don’t worry about who’ll read this, I can always blame a persona.

I died this year. Realized so much that I could no longer call what I had life. Maybe I should but I won’t. You say I give you too much credit, I laugh. You underrate yourself. Hey, haven’t you told me that thousands of times already? For the record, your smile is a black spot.

This is just rumbling, call it a piece of art at your own risk. Richie will say I’m infatuated with death, I’m not. Orato will wear that look of pseudo-concern and say I’m clutching at breaking straws of sanity. Am I? Vanity is but a front friends.

Acceptance is a hard thing. The taste of last night’s weed in one’s mouth can be stronger than me accepting people leave us. I have no problems getting out of character, getting in is the problem. In real life, it is opposite. I love people’s presence too much to take their absence seriously. To accept the fact that I will never spend time with them again. Maybe that is why I love being alone.

R.I.P Naomi.

R.I.P Gatobu.

R.I.P Nkatha.

This post is a sigh.