You are disposable

How can you not see that you are disposable? How can you not know that?

You will exit. Your time will be up before you are ready to bow out. And the sun will continue to rise and scorch bald heads. And it will set in it's ever magnificent splendour, bewitching the souls of many an art lover. The wind will blow lazily over your tomb and rage ferociously at it's sole pleasure.

They say water remembers, water always remembers. But who are you, that it remembers you before it does those whose remains are now coral; whom the seas so intimately knew. Water washes off from memory. Water will angrily wipe away all traces of your existence.

Because the elements were here in service of this earth. Like faithful soldiers forever marking time. Even fire will refuse to acknowledge your scent. The earth will not pause to acknowledge you termination. How can you not see that?

Souls more deserving of life than yourself have been shut off. Lives more meaningful than you deem your own to be. People more useful than yourself have reached their end. Everyone dies. You will, before you are ready to.

Now is all you have.

Method to My Madness

For one to become a worthy scribe, to master the enchantment of words, some madness must creep in. The right amount of madness must find space in the mind and brew intently, before the ghouls that tend to it may flow through the pen in the writer’s hand to form a masterpiece of literature.

I do not desire the madness. To desire madness is to be mad. It is to lose one’s mind, and who is to say the mind will be found again. Once unscrewed, some bolts may decide to wander free, or a nut may decide not to fit just as right as it had before. I remain adamant; I do not desire the madness. I only want to bring to life the characters that have outlived my imagination, those who have outgrown the spaces inside my head and must now find a new home. Yet I cannot achieve the inebriation without partaking of the communion.

A writer can never just leave the mind be. There is constant need to rearrange the way we see ordinary things. We must learn to not only listen to the things left unsaid, but to sniff out the details yet to be thought as well. One must see every strains of light in a dark sky and the shadows that refuse to conform. Writing, creative writing, must result from the perceptions of the third eye, from the resilience of a mind that insists on the imperfection of perfection. It is such keenness that separates the grain from the chaff. This is the absolute madness.

My Groom

I am an open-eyed girl. Able to perceive more than I can see and hear more than is said. I have learned to think about more than there is room to say.
And I have decided to pick my groom for myself.
I do not want to be wined and dined in witness of shy candle-lights. The thought alone stinks of dirty politics. I want my man to stumble before me and lay down his hunt before the sun goes for a quickie. I want him to roast it while my friends watch and salivate. I want him to feed me from his hands.
Chiseled men with muscles shaped in a gym do not seduce me. Nor does the nauseating colognes you insist on importing from worlds you cannot point out on a map. I like the scent they leave on your skin, but I am not aroused. I do not fantasize of making love to you after you butter your skin with lotions and spa treatments. What do you call that thing which makes you skin soft like a baby’s buttocks? I won’t be overcome by passion making love to a man under whose skin I cannot bury my nails. Because he wants his skin to appear flawless when he takes selfies for instagram.
I do not yearn for fine polished jewelry displayed under thick expensive glass. I will wear beads that tell a story, beads whose vibrant colours reflect my love for life. And make me proud. I want the texture of my hands to say that I am the proud daughter of a hardworking clan. When I walk I want the earth to thud and hum to the sway of my hips.
He who will wife me must acknowledge that I have substance between my ears. My cup of tea is a man whose laughter vibrates like the echo of celebration drums, not the scary echo of a cave. One who yearns to preserve my beauty; whether the shade of my skin be as glorious as a berry or as lustrous as a thousand shillings note.
I want to be with a man I will admire. A man whose value is measured not as superior or inferior to another human being, but by his humanity in a cruel world.

I originally published this post on the Storymoja Festival blog on 7th August, 2015: