I miss you,
I miss your good morning texts,
Your messages lighting up my phone,
The special ringtone I had for you,
Calling you mpenzi -
Because that’s what you are,
My darling.

I miss your voice,
Your laughter,
The warmth in your words.
I miss how we spoke of everything,
How we made each other feel alive.

I miss your kind heart, beautiful soul and spirit.
I miss your wild ambitions,
Your endless *** of kindness,
Your relentless singing of love ballads after your favourite drink,
And your desire to truly be a great person.

I miss Kivuli’s sweetest face,
The comfort you both brought me
Whenever I was lost in sadness.
I miss your smooth, dark skin,
Your handsome face,
Your gorgeous body in all its glory,
Your kindness and gentleness.
Your laughter.

I miss how natural we were together -
Effortlessly almost.
Perhaps that’s what went wrong,
Was it too easy, and is life not?

I miss the hope we shared,
The late-night conversations,
And the way your deep voice
Would echo through my heart.
What happens now?
I don’t know.
But I miss you with every fibre of my being.
I haven’t stopped loving you -
And I don’t know if I ever will.
Come back to me, mpenzi.
Come back to us.

I drift, a river restless, wide,
Carved by time, yet pulled inside.
Bound to banks that held me tight,
Yet drawn beyond their dwindling sight.

The wind hums secrets to my skin,
A song of loss, a song of kin.
The waves that call, the stars that guide,
Whisper change—yet fear resides.

I crash, I twist, I rise, I fall,
A roaring flood, a whispered call.
Melancholy pools in me,
But so does fire, wild and free.

The ocean waits with open hands,
Unmeasured depths, untrodden sands.
Am I dissolving? Am I whole?
Or just becoming something more—

A sky, a storm, a silver crest,
The river vast within my chest.
No longer lost, not yet complete,
I am the flow, I am the deep.

I lit my candles all alone,
on a night that should have been my own.
The tiny flame flickered and died,
I whispered my wishes, but none replied.

He, as always, lay asleep,
while I stood silent, tired, bleak.
I washed the dishes, cleaned the floor,
he “saved his energy” once more.

I asked, I pleaded, time and again,
but silence met me now as then.
I carried weight that no one should,
believing strength meant all I could.

And him? He sighs, he hides away,
a child in mind, a man in sway.
And me? I cook, I clean, I run,
but who sees me when the day is done?

Loneliness lingers, heavy, cold,
a story quiet, left untold.
But maybe soon, when night appears,
I’ll light a flame for me, not tears.

Is the rain falling where you are?
Can you see the bright full moon?
How far are you from me?
Miles and miles... too many to count.
Can you smell the salty sea?
Can you feel the cool night air?
Do you feel this heavy sadness,
when the rain won’t stop, like I do?
Nisan 2024|

The autumn tree didn’t betray us,
the grass still grows greener.
Fireflies glisten in the same spot,
the one that was once ours.

But I’ve seen them digging,
carving the earth to build—
a tower, a monument, a future
where our past once stood.

They are changing this place,
shaping it into something new.
And though the fireflies still return,
though the autumn tree stands still-
haven’t we changed too?

I’m not okay with loving you from a distance, but maybe love was never meant to be held so close. Perhaps the purest form of love is knowing when to let go, before we unravel each other thread by thread. Maybe the space between us will heal the scars we left behind. Maybe the silence between our glances is gentler than the weight of words unspoken. The nights stretch on like the miles between us, do you feel it? The absence, the ache, the closeness of what almost was. I stand at the threshold of our past and future, one foot in the memories we shared, the other in a future we may never touch. Were we anything more than two souls reaching, running along the outline of something that no longer exists? There’s not enough distance to forget, yet too much to reach you. I watch the tide rush in, wondering if I fought against the current, would you come ashore with me, or would you drift further into the deep? Would we unravel completely, or could we weave ourselves into something new? But maybe love is knowing when to stop reaching. Maybe it’s recognizing that we gave all we could and stepping back before we lose ourselves entirely. I’m not okay with loving you from afar, but maybe distance is the only thing keeping us whole.

we met in the winter
but became strangers by spring

"Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As if you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it." – Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

I.
We were never really afraid of emptiness
Only of void, the hollow
Which will never be filled anymore
As of an ember dying to ashes
As a photograph blurred by times
We fear only when we know
Tomorrow will never come
So when we can still see further
We abuse distance, we corrupt
Aloofness, we betray the intimacy
Of nature, we deny time of its place
It's occurrence, we unconsciously
Disrupt a timetable set to make ends
Bearable––

Not anymore

II.
Why do we even put only thirds
of coffee in our cup,
only to come back for more
In fear of content, overwhelming space?
Distance?
It is this fixation to this fear
that we fail to think of coffee running out

III.
We think in fragments
We fear the whole
Of the day being morning and afternoon
We hate the night for being night
The long stretches of hours
We could have slept,
because the darkness justifies rest
The day we could have played
because the sun justifies the break from monotony
Instead, we go in reverse

IV.
To counter fear is to think backwards
The other way––not really forward
We cheat.
We do not sleep simply because we might not awaken
We do not go out simply because we might only be ushered in
We do not try because we might fail
It is okay to sit right here
In the middle of space
Filled with comforting thoughts
That distance is a choice
from something
Not from nothing

But we will all wake up one day
From a restless night––
The sun is up, the light seeps through the window
Where the cup was lying empty on the table
This time, when we ask for the whole of it
The coffee have run out.