Give me time,
hold the reins soft in your hands.
I’m moulding a future from raw clay,
shaping it with my own hands,
climbing a hill I never stop sliding from.
Be patient with me.
I am giving the last of my breath to build more breath,
praying into the night with worn hope,
waiting for heaven to write back.
God will answer,
I feel it burning somewhere just beyond reach.
But pressure?
Pressure will crush the promise before it flowers.
It will sour the love we planted,
bruise it until it tastes like curse instead of blessing.
Don’t turn your eyes toward the neon world,
the staged lives and filtered fantasies.
You know we feast from little,
yet I still stretch it into something sweeter
so you can glimpse the life I swear I’m carving for us.
But if you make my ribs your stepping stones,
if you demand the world today,
I might not survive to see tomorrow.
I don’t want to die young.
I need silence, space, and peace,
not to escape you,
but to return with enough abundance
to lift us both
into the life that waits.
So hold me gently,
walk beside me,
and one day,
we’ll rise together.
He Spends the Gold of Her
She is beautiful, yes,
but beauty grows fangs in the dark.
She tells you she’s out with a friend,
yet her truth is curled on another man’s chest,
his heartbeat pounding, the thud of wanting,
a sound you were never allowed to hear.
His fingers roam through her hair,
slow, sure,
mapping a tenderness she once withheld.
She loves it,
the salt of his sweat,
the wild brush of his chest hair,
the animal warmth that keeps her there.
She is not busy, brother.
She is not home.
She is answering a call
you were never invited to,
the quiet work of sheets and bodies
moving without guilt.
Her phone isn’t dead,
your name is.
Blocked.
So silent you can hear your own hope collapsing.
The things she hoarded from you,
laughter, softness, time,
fall easily into his open hands.
She gives him the light she swore she never had.
Rise from the wreckage,
rebuild the kingdom of yourself.
Leave her ghost behind
and grow into your better name.
There is life beyond this wound.
And love, real love,
will meet you where you stand,
yours to keep.
Let Me Go
I’ve been watching the clock face more than yours lately,
Checking the signal on a glass screen that stays dark.
You say you’re busy, and I suppose that’s a kind of truth,
But busyness is often just a wall we build
Stone by heavy stone, to keep the neighbors out.
I’m standing on the far side of that wall now,
Listening for a footfall that never seems to come.
It’s the silence that does the hardest labor,
It sows a crop of doubts in the fields I thought were cleared.
When you don’t answer, or you answer three days late,
The words feel like an afterthought, a cold crumb
Thrown to a bird that’s forgotten how to fly away.
If the fire has gone to ash, don’t stir the coals.
There’s no use in pretending the room is still warm
Just because we’re both still standing in the dark.
Go on and say it. Unlatch the gate and let me go.
A clean break is like a sharp frost in late autumn,
It kills the garden, yes, but it saves us the long misery
Of watching the leaves turn yellow and rot upon the vine.
Lenacapavir, The Twice-Yearly Miracle: Is This the End of the Beginning for HIV?
People hesitate most at clinics closest to where they live. That hesitation is rarely about distance or time, it is about being seen. In my journey through community development and health advocacy, I have watched people walk past facilities meant to save their lives because they fear the look that seems to measure you. Fear the silent calculations neighbours make when someone enters a clinic known in the community as an HIV point, whether clearly branded or simply recognized locally. For years, HIV drug points marked with PEPFAR, USAID, or familiar donor logos have told a story before a word is spoken. Separated from other services, they invite judgement and connect dots.
To cope, patients travel. Someone living in Homa Bay town collects ARVs in Oyugis, Ndhiwa, or wherever anonymity feels safer. It helps, yes, but it does not heal the fear. It only relocates it. Treatment becomes a journey of avoidance rather than access. And it raises the question, “should life-saving care require disappearance?” Until HIV services are fully integrated, until seeking treatment looks no different from visiting any other clinic, stigma will continue to do its damage through the systems meant to defeat it.
HIV survives in systems that expose, in routines that punish the ordinary act of seeking care, in the invisible calculations people make every day to remain unseen. And it is within this reality, where access still demands courage, that breakthroughs like Lenacapavir become not just medicine, but possibility.
For decades, the United Nations’ goal of zero new HIV infections by 2030 has felt distant. Roughly 1.3 million people are diagnosed with HIV each year, and the 2025 target, fewer than half a million new infections annually, was missed. As the finish line drifted, global funding tightened. Cuts to PEPFAR and USAID transformed what once felt inevitable into a whisper of hope. Then came Lenacapavir.
Lenacapavir is neither a vaccine nor a cure. It is a long-acting capsid inhibitor, a drug that targets HIV-1’s protective shell and disrupts the virus’s replication at multiple stages. For decades, prevention relied on daily discipline. One missed pill could open a window for infection. Lenacapavir changes that equation. Administered just twice a year, it works like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) without the daily burden. It offers a six-month shield protection that slips seamlessly into life as it is actually lived.
The trial results were extraordinary. In sub-Saharan Africa, the PURPOSE trials reported zero new infections among women using Lenacapavir. Among gay and bisexual men and transgender women, protection reached 96%. In a field long accustomed to incremental gains, these numbers feel historic.
Breakthrough, though, means little without access. Gilead Sciences, which manufactures Lenacapavir under the brand name Yeztugo, could have confined it to wealthy markets. Instead, it signed royalty-free licensing agreements with six generic manufacturers, opening the door for affordable versions in 120 or thereabout low- and middle-income countries.
In Kenya, the National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) is preparing for a nationwide rollout beginning January 2026. Lenacapavir will not replace condoms, daily PrEP, or other prevention tools. It will expand choice. And in high-burden settings, choice is power. Protection without disclosure. Prevention without permission. Safety without explanation.
Can a twice-yearly injection help the world reach the UN’s 2030 target? Possibly. Lenacapavir directly confronts three long-standing gaps in the HIV response:
1. Adherence: No daily pill. No constant reminders. No fear of discovery.
2. Biology: Clinical trials leave the virus with almost no room to replicate.
3. Access: Generic production makes scale realistic, not rhetorical.
Lenacapavir will not end HIV on its own. But it may mark a turning point.
The First Morning
You carry a light that holds against the wind,
A soul that has weathered the seasons of this year
Without losing its fragrance. It is a rare thing,
Like finding a spring that stays clear in the mud,
And I find myself wondering, in the cooling air,
If my own shadow provides a place for you to rest.
The calendar marks a line we are about to cross,
A fence between the old hay and the new growth.
I have no map for what lies on the other side,
No towering design or blueprints rolled in my palms,
Only the simple desire to walk that uneven ground
With my hand finding yours in the spaces between.
Let us not be like the summer travelers who meet
Only where the view is easy and the sun is high.
There is a deeper labor in the soil than just joy,
I would rather we be the stone walls that hold,
Building something well-weathered, inch by weary inch,
Instead of a tent that collapses when the birds fly south.
It should be a slow abiding chime, like the pulse of a clock,
A turning toward one another to ask, “How goes it?”
Not out of debt, but because the garden needs tending.
I can carry the heavy end, and you the light,
Or we can switch when the day grows long and lean,
So neither of us has to walk the furrow alone.
We must come to this without the polished masks
Or the hollow hope of what the other might provide.
True love is not a merchant weighing out silver,
It is the acceptance of the bread on the table,
Finding grace in the plainness of the wooden grain
And the warmth of a fire we both labored to feed.
So, if you are willing to step into the white frost,
Find me as I am, unadorned and standing still.
I will look for you in the same honest light,
The new year is coming, cold and bright and wide,
Shall we see what the morning has to say to us?
Plain Dealing
Your pastor clears his throat behind the wood,
To trade you prophecies for silver coin.
He’ll promise that the coming year is good,
A holy harvest that the stars will join.
He’ll say the year is yours to fence and keep,
As if the seasons care for what you claim,
Or that the seeds of luck are sowed so deep
They’ll grow for anyone who speaks a name.
He’ll warn you of the way the year begins,
That if you start it weary, or in pain,
You’re destined for a winter of your sins,
A long and bitter walk through freezing rain.
But I have lived enough of life to know
A blackout at the start is just a night.
The dirt is indifferent to the things we sow;
It’s up to us to find the morning light.
Don’t mind the bells that clamor in the town,
Nor all the talk of what the year will bring.
A man must pull his own bright vision down
And do the work that makes his spirit sing.
Listen to the wood that builds the frame,
And drop the rot that seeks to make you slow;
A life is not a prayer or ancient name,
But just the steady way you choose to go.
The things that harm you have no place to stay,
So shut the gate and let the latch fall tight.
It’s better far to walk a lonely way
Than lose your footing in another’s light.
Go find the task that fits your heavy hand,
And tend the field that calls your heart to be;
There is no luck within this frozen land,
Save what you strike from flint and mastery.
Be happy in the marrow of your bone,
And make the memories worth the time they take.
The path you walk is yours and yours alone,
With every choice a promise that you make.
You are the master of the coming day,
The only one who holds the final key;
So turn the page and walk the winter way,
As certain as the tide upon the sea.
Happy New Year.
First Light
The bells will ring to claim a brand new sky,
And men will preach that luck is bought with gold.
They’ll say the way you start is how you’ll die,
A weary tale that’s long been over-sold.
But shadows do not haunt the year’s first cry,
Nor does the dusk dictate what days will hold.
Go find the work that makes the spirit tall,
And lean into the craft that you adore.
The world will try to make you hear its call,
But you must learn to shutter up the door.
If something seeks to break or make you small,
Then let it fall and find your side no more.
The soul is mended by the things we choose,
By quiet walks and whispers in the dark.
You have no debt to pay, no time to lose,
By chasing every faint and fleeting spark.
To save yourself is all the path you use,
Let joy become your only steady mark.
Happy 2026.
Final Gear
I’ve marked no map with ink or public pride,
To show the woods where I intend to go.
The things I seek have nowhere left to hide,
And what I reap is what I choose to sow.
I take the path where fewer shadows bide,
And leave the crowds to talk of what they know.
The fence I mend is built of quiet stone,
To keep the peace and part the draining guest.
A man can walk a standard mile alone,
And find in silence all he needs of rest.
For every seed of will that I have grown,
I ask no leave to put it to the test.
So let the wheels engage their hollow, wind-swept song,
Across the hills and through the turning lane.
I owe no word to prove where I belong,
Or why I chose the sun above the rain.
The drive is short, the inner light is strong,
I go my way, and need not explain.
Bye 2025.
Rivers of My Own Making
There is no universe in which I am sitting down to read how someone built a whole cereal shop from a single grain of rice. Never. I respect the effort it took to type all that optimism, but no. Your road doesn’t bend like mine, and I refuse to be shamed into feeling inadequate simply because my idea of joy moves to a different sun. If you want to pray, pray. I pray too, my brother. We are all sinners anyway. The only difference is how we manage our sins. Mine are personal. I enjoy them quietly and carry the consequences alone. Yours arrive with collateral damage, cloaked in lies, dipped in theft, and sanctified from the pulpit. A pastor from hell, if we’re being honest. Cut me some slack, man.
2025 has been incredible. Financially, the fireworks stayed away, but the lessons arrived on time. Lessons that stay. I learned how to take care of myself by leaning into what I love. I learned that some opinions bloom like flowers but are made of dust, pretty to see, hollow to hold. I learned the strength that lives in subtle sighs, the subtle mastery in watching without interference, the rare discipline of letting words fall around me without reaching for a reply. And perhaps the hardest lesson of all. When the lights dim, the applause fades, and the crowd vanishes into the night, only your own shadow remains. That truth seeps in like a silent river, carrying its weight with quiet insistence, tracing the contours of the soul, unseen yet unstoppable, leaving freedom in its wake.
I carry no resolutions scribbled on paper for 2026. Free of banners of ambition and untouched by public drumbeats, I carry instead intentions. I plan to be better. To build myself financially. To chase what I want without hesitation or apology. And yes, I plan to cut people off, gently but firmly, when their presence drains more than it gains. Whether I leave or stay, your life will continue uninterrupted. I’ve made peace with that long ago. I plan to do more business, take bolder risks, and travel wider, seeing places for their stories, feeling the streets beneath my feet, tasting lives outside my own. Unfettered by heralded plans, letting the quiet flowering of my journey reveal its own story.
Still, gratitude stays. Deeply. For the hands that steadied me when my footing slipped. For those who pulled me out of trenches without demanding explanations. For those who trusted my strength enough to place opportunity in my hands. For that, a special medal goes to Sheila Chepkirui Yegon. Some people are mere passing notes in your life, others are chords that resonate. Sheila is a river of melodies, a living network that carries you forward, flowing steady, connecting what was, what is, and what could be. May God widen her path and multiply her grace.
And always, my brother Stephen Ochieng (Soo Ochieng), take your flowers, bana. Always. We remain stubborn believers in the impossible, still dreaming with the audacity of people who refuse to shrink their visions too early.
This isn’t a storm, it’s alignment,
It’s growth,
It’s choosing your lane, and driving without explaining the route.
Solo Drive
I’ve marked no map with ink or public pride,
To show the woods where I intend to go.
The things I seek have nowhere left to hide,
And what I reap is what I choose to sow.
I take the path where fewer shadows bide,
And leave the crowds to talk of what they know.
The fence I mend is built of quiet stone,
To keep the peace and part the draining guest.
A man can walk a standard mile alone,
And find in silence all he needs of rest.
For every seed of will that I have grown,
I ask no leave to put it to the test.
So let the wheels engage their rhythmic song,
Across the hills and through the turning lane.
I owe no word to prove where I belong,
Or why I chose the sun above the rain.
The drive is short, the inner light is strong,
I go my way, and need not explain.
@doddyokelo
The Unsent Text
The number sits there, plain as unstacked wood,
A short row noted in the mind’s own slate.
The path to use it has been long understood,
And all the tools are ready on the gate.
No mountain to be crossed, no debt to pay,
It’s only patience that I choose to spend.
I’ve kept the thought inside me for a day,
A waiting letter that I will not send.
I tell myself the courage yet remains,
That it is wiser to be quiet just now.
The simple act is subject to the soft rains,
The slow bend of the unpicked apple bough.
It is not cowardice that makes a man delay,
But seeing clear the cost of the last turn,
A field can wait for plowing one more day,
But once you light the fire, it must burn.
The true work is not the reaching out with haste,
But in the long regard I give the wire.
A man must know what he intends to taste,
Before he builds a larger, hotter fire.
I know that once the single stone is thrown,
The ripples travel outward from that date,
And must be met, once they are fully grown,
At the slow-built fence where I’ve chosen to wait.
okelododdychitchats 