Her boy left,
‘Man of the house’, hustler, he said
She’d laughed,
Wiping the crumbs off his silk skin,
Some man of the house,
She’d muttered.
Her boy came back,
Luggage rolled in dirty, stupid sheets
She hugged it
A body freckled with bullet holes,
What monster did this?
She wailed.
Her beloved ‘hustler’,
shot by the police for being a poor young man
Was robbed
of the chance to be a man
She cursed.
The announcements came,
Of deadly rains on the horizon
She watched,
As Serikali refused to lift a finger, unmoved.
She sighed.
When the waters came,
Her little ones lay beside her, peacefully tucked in
She dreamed,
Of them, her little lights love
Before she jerked!
Awake, confused, shocked and screaming,
She watched,
Her little lights and loves turn numb, cold and silent
As she too
Went numb, cold and silent.
Another story,
Of the states’ war on the poor.
In memory of Jacinta Adhiambo and Benna Buluma and all the victims of flooding
