A Peace I Cannot Take Yet

The world was a thief in a velvet cloak,
It took the bread, the wine, the light.
It turned to ash the words I spoke,
And left me shivering in the night.
I gave my gold, my grace, my years,
To hands that only learned to take,
Until the well of all my fears
Ran dry within an empty lake.

I do not fear the quiet dark,
The ending of the breath and bone,
I do not dread the final spark
That leaves the weary traveler prone.
The grave is but a silent bed,
A place where treachery must cease,
Where heavy hearts and aching heads
Are folded in a shroud of peace.

But oh, the faces at the door,
The ones who hold my tattered name.
I fear the shadow on their floor,
The snuffing of their candle flame.
For though the world has stripped me bare
And traded kindness for a stone,
Their love is all the breath and air
That I have ever truly known.

I stay for them. I bear the weight.
I walk the miles I cannot stand.
I bar the final, silent gate
With nothing but a trembling hand.
It isn’t death that makes me weep,
Or shadows where the spirits roam;
It’s knowing, if I fall to sleep,
I leave a broken house for home.

@doddyokelo

What She Left Behind

The break wasn’t a sound, not really.
It was more the way a fence post gives way
after years of leaning into the wet wind,
a slow, settled surrender to the earth’s heavy pull that no one bothers to watch.

She left the gate swinging wide,
and I suppose that’s where the dust got in.
It’s the hollow of a fire gone out,
stark as a white stone in a dry sky,
unyielding as the granite we used to stack
to keep the field from the garden.

I went out today to check the timber.
The young trees are still bent from last year’s storm,
white ribs bowing over the black dirt,
refusing to stand straight even now that the air is still.
They’ve learned the shape of the weight they carried.

I thought of calling out to the woods,
but the woods are busy being trees.
And the heart, I’ve found, is much like a dry field,
it doesn’t actually shatter.
It just hardens until the plow can’t find a way in,
waiting for a rain that hasn’t promised to come.

There is a certain duty in the repair,
in picking up the stones she let fall.
But for now, I’ll just watch the sky turn the color of wet slate
and wonder if the deer know the difference
between a path and a boundary.

@doddyokelo

I Finally Understood.

You took five years
and slit its throat without a pulse of regret,
a neat execution of history.
Then you stood on top of the ruin
pointing at me,
pretending the blood was mine to answer for
when your hands were still wet from the work.

You wanted miracles
from a man wrestling rent every month,
3,500 shillings dragging their feet.
You wanted a Mercedes Benz
from a man still begging breath from broken mornings.
I gave what I couldn’t afford,
pockets stuffed with dues to God,
a wallet running on fumes and delusion.
But somehow you demanded
Paris dreams from a pocket-of-poverty stricken reality.

Still, I loved you
like a vigil in the dark.
I took you out in a mall with what I could raise,
bought you a gift I imagined your skin would claim,
yet it gathers dust where you dropped it.
And when you said the gesture was useless,
I finally understood,
you meant me.

@doddyokelo

Give Me Time

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.

@doddyokelo

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.

@doddyokelo

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.

@doddyokelo

Love, Receipted

You call me lazy,
as if rest were rebellion,
as if the absence of a paycheck meant
I’d married idleness and sworn fidelity to failure.
You think I wake each morning to romance poverty,
to sip on the bitter tea of rejection
and call it breakfast.

You think I don’t hunt for work,
darling, I’ve applied so hard the internet knows my name.
I’ve learned new skills until my mind wheezes from exhaustion,
repackaged my dreams in “professional tone,”
and written cover letters that could melt granite.
Still, the silence from employers breathes louder
than any sermon on hard work.

But go on, roll your eyes like coins in a rich man’s pocket.
You love the performance of pity, don’t you?
The way you sigh,
You wear my struggle like a badge
that says “look what I tolerate.”
You hold my empty wallet against my neck
like a priest offering salvation through mockery.

Your friends, the walking bank accounts,
toast to success with imported laughter.
They look at me the way one studies
a museum exhibit labeled Before Success.
And you,
you shrink beside them,
embarrassed to be seen loving someone
who doesn’t come with receipts.

I know I can’t afford dinner dates,
but baby, I can give you poetry,
written with hunger’s ink,
where every word costs a piece of my pride.
You want steak, I offer metaphors,
you want champagne, I bring conversation.
But apparently, love without a tip is just noise.

You say I make excuses,
as if failure were a choice I make before breakfast.
Man, I’ve tried,
tried until my hope broke its spine
from bending too long under your expectations.
But effort doesn’t trend, does it?
It’s not sexy on Instagram.

You used to look at me like promise,
now you look at me like pity dressed for dinner.
Your eyes audit my worth
like a cashier scanning expired dreams.
You don’t even say it out loud,
but your silence spells liability.
Love, it seems, needs a payslip now.

So go ahead, call me disgusting,
a broke ass night certified by circumstance.
Laugh with your friends,
they’ve earned their arrogance.
I’ll be here, broke but breathing,
scribbling poems on the back of rejection letters,
because even in poverty, darling,
I write better than they ever will live.

@doddyokelo

If I Die Today

What if I were to die today, beloved, would your heart stir at all, or would the silence between us deepen into an endless grave? Would you pretend, for the eyes of the world, that you had loved me, that in the shadows of our days you carried a flame you never lit? Or would you let truth, raw and cruel, escape your lips and say, “He was never worth knowing”? I wonder how heavy my name would sound upon your tongue when spoken before mourners, how steady or broken your voice would be if asked to read the words of my eulogy. Would my absence cut through your chest like a blade, or would it wash over you like a gentle relief, as though a long burden had at last been lifted?

For often, in your weariness, I hear a sentence unspoken, that my love itself wearies you, that my presence is not balm but weight. And I, foolish in devotion, still stretch myself toward you like a tree bends toward a reluctant sun. You say you are tired, yet it sounds to me as if you are tired not of days but of me: tired of my words, tired of my arms, tired of the tribe from which my blood flows. My heart trembles with the thought, do you despise the very breath with which I call your name?

If death should come to me as swiftly as twilight, would it soothe you? Would the quiet of my absence give you the peace my living presence could not? To love you has been to walk a path of thorns barefoot, yet still I would choose it, still I would kneel before the altar of your indifference and offer the bruised fruit of my heart. For love, when true, does not measure return, nor count the wounds it gathers; it only asks to give, even unto its last breath. And if that breath comes today, then my only prayer is this, that somewhere in the hollow of your silence, you might whisper that I loved you, fiercely and without apology.

@okelododdychitchats

We Met Again

I saw her again,
the girl I once loved.
Time had touched her kindly.
She wore a white dress, soft as a prayer,
and it clung to her form
like the wind belongs to the sea.

She was lovelier than I remembered,
not just in face,
but in the quiet grace she carried.
Clean. Still.
Like a page I might’ve turned too soon.

The dress, white as chapel vows,
did justice to every curve,
each one a line in the poem I once left unfinished.
She smiled,
not bitter, not bold, just enough
to stir something old in me.

She said I looked different too,
more like the man she always pictured beside her.
Stronger, quieter, maybe even kinder.

And for a moment,
in the gentle silence between us,
I think we both wondered,
not with regret,
but with a wistful sort of hope,
if the pages we wrote apart
could still make sense together.

@okelododdychitchats