The Rock Cries

                                                                                         28th May, 2015.

Dear Maya,

Today, it is one year since your absence. The violence you so much decried still ravages us. Brothers still fight brothers, friends stab each other's back, earth is raped and bleeds. We look at the rivers, trees and rocks and do not see the oneness in them. In us.

The blinds of false dedication to our faiths are yet to fall off. So many mouths hang open in hunger, while others yell hatred and their hands strike out lives. Innocent lives that cannot fight back.

The earth weeps. Your precious little ones go to sleep and wake up stiff, covered in dust. Do you remember the Chibok girls? You prayed endlessly for their safety just before you left. Oh dear Maya. They are yet to return. We wailed and wailed, soiled our beautiful shirts with tears. Ruined our expensive makeups. Believing they would return. But not our tears nor the hash tags could do the miracle. Distant friends gave up sleep and watched sorrowfully, helplessly, as the flames from their lit candles wobbled and wobbled and died. So we forgot about them. We lived on like they never existed. We found new topics. New hash tags and took delight in them. We sought for humour in everything and left no space in our hearts to think, to remember, the captive. We do not even pray anymore for we have lost faith in its efficacy.

Dear Maya, daily, the world loses gems like you and we dress in black as you ascend gloriously to your maker. We cry, because we are afraid. We are afraid because while you toiled to make things better, we slept away. But your departure shook us to reality and now confusion reigns. We do not possess such energy as you did. We escape when we ought to stand and speak and fight. Our walls crumble and fall on us and we skelter around, seeking for shelter.

The world misses you. Bravery. Love. Grace. All that you were. It deepens, this void. This realisation that there is no Maya Angelou speaking up for the marginalised. No Maya Angelou striving to create a balance in this stricken world. So we simply trudge on. With the pain of your absence in our hearts. Seeking solace in your words and literature and as the night gets longer and tougher, all we yearn is your voice, your voice saying to us...

Good morning.

Forlorn Lover III

You left. But you forgot your poetry. What do I do with it? Set it ablaze? But how do you burn something already burning in you?

Today, I wore the last drop of our perfume and the smell of you followed me everywhere. I returned home, sodden in my own tears. Of liberation. Of nostalgia. After today, I won't have to remember you. I will wash clean this dress, rid it of every scent. I will bury deep the empty peach container of our perfume. Then you will be forgotten.

But here I am, again, your poetry in my heart with my soul on fire...

When it alteration finds...

Growing up, I used to think that family meant blood. You know blood, right? There's no separating it from itself. I used to think that a father doesn't only cheer his children, pride them in everyone's face and shower them with praises. I used to think that he doesn't only provide for them, but that he also cautions. Cautions his children when they go wrong. Spank, spank, if necessary. I didn't think that a father, on finding out that his beloved child robs people, rapes, gambles and even murders, denies him a benefit of doubt. I didn't think that he would slam the door shut to the very face whose forehead he once kissed. I didn't think he could become forever deaf to the incessant sounds of palms banging the door, begging to be held and heard. Where went all the love? Was it a farce?

Now, I seek to understand, what does "ties" really mean? This thing called family and friendship. What does it mean? Embracing me because you think I'm good and dumping me almost as soon? Why are people ever friends, family, if they can't say to each other, "Hey, I heard what you did. You messed up big time" How does one form and break these ties all by themselves? What fate then do we condemn the "bad" to? What if they wallow so because no one ever cared? Because every other person dumped them and moved on? Again, what if they aren't really so bad? What if all they needed was to be heard...but no one ever asked...No one.

And we wonder why people take their own lives...