As Promised | Naomi Nduta Waweru

Here is what I have learnt of breakages;

1. You will spend your whole life waiting for the wind to blow like an act of mercy.
   
2. What falls on the rooftop sometimes, is rarely proportional to what
   is swept from the earth.
   
3. The debris will stand at the foot of the steps—abundant like a
   hill awaiting its eruption into a mountain,
   helpless like a newborn whose hands cannot help them
   for the hell of it, expectant as anything that just wants to
   be noticed, and still, you will glove your hands, boot your feet,
   apron your front and begin the work of easing. 
   The debris will exhaust you one day for everything in it 
   that you cannot salvage—your love for order, your mother’s 
   once vibrant cheekbones, the foldable couch with missing bolts
   on which she can no longer rot.
   
4. What is it about the night that try as much as we can, we can not
   put a finger on it? I let you breathe from my mouth. In the morning,
   I cannot put up with what hangs in the air. The crop is drowning. 
   The fields are doused from all the water they cannot swallow.
   
5. The news of the cancer will find us counting the pauses and sighs
   of the weatherman. The cold will finish your bones, is all I can think
   to say when he predicts another variation of the weather we do not want.
   
6. You can love me through the breakage and destruction. I could
   love you back, until loving becomes an act of kindness more than it is
   what has been known to make the world go round.

Footnote: Daddy, in the year of sun, I mistook the midday sun biting my scalp for your way of saying you did not like me cutting my hair. 

Naomi Nduta Waweru (Swan XVIII)

Naomi Nduta Waweru (Swan XVIII) writes her poems, short fiction and essays from Nairobi, Kenya. She made the 2023 Kikwetu flash fiction longlist, is an alumni of the Nairobi Writing Academy as well as the Ubwali Masterclass 2024. When she grows up, she wants to be a list of further possibilities. Reach her on
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Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash