The Water

      I always used to wonder when watching these movies that show when one is drowning. Slow, intense, final. How can that which man uses for leisure be the same that man finds death in? I often wondered, until i was the one left facing the floor of the waters surface. I was drowning. I have been drowning. I think i still am. Being a writer was one of the best things in my life. There were days when i would literally have butterflies when i would hold a pen. Writing always felt like a first date. My mind would play dress up, smell fresh, stand straight and eagerly wait to ring the doorbell of the page i was on just to meet your mind. I used to love to take a walk in the rain while still living in Fedha Estate more than 8 years ago. That, i did not to protect myself from the rain but to enjoy it. I would sit on the slabs in Maua Close with a large umbrella in my right hand as it poured; watching others run almost in slow motion to escape the very drops of water they would on the weekend crave to jump in in the name of swimming. I loved life and you could smell life on me. 

     When i started out in university i remember telling my friend and roommate Kombo that nobody would know i was a poet- false humility at work. He ensured i was proven wrong at his hand. Fast forward a week or so after that statement i was on a stage humbled by yet another standing ovation- false humility not at work here. I had around this very time been the featured poet at Kwani? at just the age of 16/17. I was working with the best artistes in the country as well as the best producers. Later on i met the amazing Imani Woomera who managed to convince me that i could make a difference with my poetry. She carried me as we; together with other brilliant poets begun Slam Africa under who i term one of the best poets i have ever listened to. I believed in myself, my music and my poetry. Things were looking good. I was now recording together with extremely talented friends and the beautiful thing was that these weren't just songs we were doing. We weren't just musicians, we breathed it, bled it and loved it. We were on the rise. I was on the rise. Was. Something happened to me. Something broke. 

    2009 was the last time i loved poetry, music and writing. I can't remember exactly where this passion i once walked hand in hand with slipped away to. Maybe i was careless. How does one walk hand in hand with another and not feel the other hand slipping away? I had gone too far into obscurity to look for passions hand and i was naive enough to believe it would find me. I could write in my sleep but that was never why i loved poetry and eventually i found myself writing in my sleep and never when awake to the fact that i was broken. I saw the art prostituted. I roamed streets seeing poetry and music under street lights skimpily dressed, showing thighs and cleavage and the same voice that once proclaimed in sober breath power to the people was staggering and screaming YOLO. 'Sista' was a term last used by the likes of Angie Stone and Jill Scott before time changed lingoes just as fast as it changed hearts. I now craved for something that nobody recognized any longer. I begun to feel old and irrelevant reading obituaries of hopes and passion. I lost faith in my own words. The very same words that i was told could change the world were dying inside struggling to change me.

      I stopped writing and my reflection begun to grow grey hair and wrinkles so i avoided looking into the mirror. Because i no longer believed in my own words i fueled myself on the words of others to the point only dust from my heart could be seen hanging off the cliff of my lips; even the dust seemed to have no place in me. Hollow filled i did the only thing i thought i could. I gave it all up. I told God take it all. My hands had become too feeble to hold onto dreams any longer and so i put them in stronger hands. What better than to look for passion- old and grey in the one that made her? 

     5 years i felt like i still had nothing to offer. Here i was, restored in my faith in God, yet i still despised myself for not running through those alleyways all those years ago to find passion and here i was still grieving. Still grappling with the question many like me fight with: am I really good enough? Do my words matter anymore? Will i ever feel alive again and will passion ever resurrect because i am tired of graveyard visits staring at unmarked tombstones with all i have being my fear of the rain. So here i am, no umbrella, looking for the living among the dead and knowing that it has to change, and then you pushed me. Pushed me into water that found me in the middle of nowhere and here i am drowning: believing you pushed me for a purpose only you know but that i have come to love; the only thing i love these days. The sky never looked more beautiful like it does from within the water. Suffocating, looking to my left i see you passion: un-aged, smiling and with your hand stretched out. I was pushed to find you and your hand in mine has never felt more purposeful. I remember looking at you as my eyes closed slowly and the illusion of feet wade in the water. 

     Today you're here. Still un-aged, still smiling saying i waited for you and you came for me. You were still beautiful because you were in the water and the very same water is where our love was re-birthed. I now know how it feels to be drowning but now i know the beauty of how it feels to be alive.