My baby sings to me sometimes

A gift of wind from her lungs. Giving up the thing they love the most.

She explains to me “Mpenzi, wakati mwingine inabidi tujitoe sadaka”

Meaning “My love, sometimes we have to sacrifice”

I know the tale more than most. My mother was a sun too in love with the stars so she gave us some of her bright and sat on the throne of the moon, watching us shine on the midnight of her skin.

My baby sings to me sometimes

Songs about trees, but not the brown of the branches but the dark of her roots, the basin of her belly where her pride comes from. Just like that of her mother and her mother before her.

“Umekula leo?” “Have you eaten today?”, “because it is the nature of my hands to care for your body, and the nature of my heart to care for your soul”.

My baby sings to me sometimes

She hums “lala salama” like a ritual to chase away night mares.

She whispers “nakupenda” like she doesn't trust her lips to say what her heart means.

And she sings, like only queens do, like only dreams do.

My love, I have gathered your voice in the desert of my favourite memories, and yours is the background music to everything good that has ever happened to me.

So sell me your whisper, and hum me a song about stars and midnight and moons that used to be suns. And I will pay the price, I will peel the skin from my secrets and show you all the parts of me where I hide God.

Because  wakati mwingine inabidi tujitoe sadaka, but most times we don’t.