I haven’t seen my brother in, like, three years? I wonder what for. Shred it out its course if friends who shared the torch barely talk. Every time I think of you nursing my injuries, I feel your wordless blessedness and not remorse. Recorded songs and left blank verses hoping, one day, he would sharpen my iron ores into diamonds and soul jewels.

His exile, made me blue. I exhumed the director’s cut to see if the tumour is resectable. Swallowed my pride to intensive-cure the grief from long ago. He was the only man who ever sampled my eulogy and it was the most alive I ever came close to being immortal with my music, the shrapnels of my prognosis scattered into sharp debris.

Could I say, that this was the hidden point of our destiny? November ‘22; too close to walking through the graveyard stretch reciting an ode to meeting with my eclipse. Wasn’t our diary demos our only way to journey through the soul?

At some point in a man’s life, the gallows humours his cake, budding from the dirt, how much of fate is enough to separate him from his loved ones? The myth of invincibility crumbles if taken by their literal wisdom. You need compassion and sensitivity to quell the terrors of life’s raging storms. And when you are out, detonating into pieces, only encouraging words I believe are, ‘not waving… but drowning,’ and never fall sick with the symptoms of a sailor.

I pray my utopian dreams would never be deleted, roll with it, walk it out, because nowadays remorse has a small window to adjust the aperture. So many of us frozen in time, thinking the future is generous with its chances. That’s how we bury each other on top of beautiful funeral budgets. We say life got fast, we can’t breathe, but is that gracious than tears shed over shinning mahogany caskets? Class of ‘14, I laid my wreaths on Gigi, Phannie, Oti and Ben. The wounds never closed, I simply pickpocketed the florist by planting my own roses. They ain’t dead. Might that explain why, sometimes, I miss them so much?

Things have to change. Walking on a tight rope, we swallow our pride in case it’s placebo. My swole heart couldn’t handle the medicine. Nova tells me it’s okay for his father to mourn. Designer pain, the gifts that we give to the world. Lost in translation, sometimes I pray for strength and tranquility. Jumping into Lazarus pit in case I can resurrect my friend’s beetle, rolling this pebble over blades of grass, even when the past seems improbable weighed against the rubric puzzle of coming of age.

Wuod Dudi Kojwach, juogi oila ajuogni puga. Nyakwar Nyabila abiloni binda kapok magoro ogwaro Agwambo osiep Olang’o Nyabola. I implode, in this treacherous world, from all the guns we blew with roses. The people onlooking, when the light faded into the distance, how did we do it? But before that most emcees chided us, we sounded stupid. Heard it so much, after Proof of Life, alone feeling petrified; what was supposed to be my recovery plunged deeper into isolation, it was all unknown to the naked eyes. I tried to balance the equations to see where the atrophy was leaking my energy off the model, advancing what my earlier poetry couldn’t have, prophecized.

I got a lot more to say but I reckon I leave this next bit blank —.