After

It didn’t fall so much as it unfolded.
One minute, the sky was a familiar ceiling,
and the next, a bruise began to spread from the center out,
smothering the sun until the light felt thin,
brittle enough to snap between my fingers.

You don’t realize how much the light holds you up
until it’s gone.

Now, the air is thick with the soot of burned-out stars.
The iron draft of a closing door has changed everything,
it’s a predatory thing.
It’s in my bones now, pulling my shoulders toward the dirt,
turning my footsteps into heavy prayers that no one hears.
My knees have forgotten the habit of standing.

There is a cold, dense knot where my chest used to be,
a collapsed star, a private black hole
feeding on the scraps of my better days.
It doesn’t just take, it erases.
It has swallowed the before, the maybe, and the us,
leaving only this heavy, crippled silence
where my heart used to beat.

@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

AND YET, WE VOTE

WHO PROTECTS THE PEOPLE FROM THE POLICE ?

You may write us off,
dismiss us ,
ignore us in Parliament halls padded with stolen wealth,
but still, we see

We are the country beneath your motorcades,
the hands that build and break,
the voices cracking in the dust
because hope costs too much now.

And yet,
we vote.

We vote for thieves in clean suits

We vote for wolves draped in our flags,

Enough.

We are tired.
Tired of job descriptions reading “Must be connected.”
Tired of degrees gathering dust
while our dreams starve in silence.

We are tired of joblessness turned into weaponry,
young men hired cheap to kill our own voices,
paid to break bones they’ve never healed in their own lives.

Tired of watching peaceful protesters
shot dead,
while those who loot in daylight
are guarded like royalty.

Tired of asking:
“Who protects the people from the police?”

Tired of staged outrage,
press conferences filled with air,
and politicians who only remember their roots
when it’s time to lie again.

You fight for positions, not for people.
You dine with the devil,
then kneel in churches too small for your sins.

You debate your egos on live TV
as our people dig trenches
not for roads,
but for graves.

You die to be seen.
But we die because we’re ignored.

Kenya is choking.
On debt.
On lies.
On the stink of promises unkept.

We are not asking.
We are telling.

This time, we vote with memory.
With pain.
With names.
With tears that learned how to speak.

This time,
you will not scare us with teargas.
You will not buy us with t-shirts.
You will not distract us with empty tribal drums.

We will remember who was silent when we bled.
We will remember who smiled while we starved.
We will remember who disappeared our brothers
and called us TREASONOUS CRIMINALS.

We are not the children you once fooled.
We have grown teeth.
We have grown rage.
And we are coming.

So let the ballot tremble.
Let your seats shake.
Let the ground beneath your stolen homes shift.

Because next time,
we are not just voting.

We are reclaiming.

And if you still don’t listen,
then hear this:

We are not afraid.
We are not asleep.
We are not yours.
Not anymore.

@Okelododdychitchats

#RUTOMUSTGO #ENDPOLICEBRUTALITY #RAGEANDCOURAGE
#JUSTICEFORELIJOSHUA

The Sound of Love (In Three Words)

There is a river in my chest,
its current stirred by longing.
I have wrestled with syllables,
wrestled them like Jacob with the angel,
and still, they slipped from me.

I’ve summoned sonnets like old friends,
dressed up my ache in velvet metaphors,
cradled my truth in gilded rhyme,
but still, the soul was unclothed.

Words, those proud and peacock things,
marched across parchment
but none bore the weight
of my trembling heart.

Then came silence.
And out of silence,
three humble drumbeats:

I. Love. You.

They stood,
not as grand orators,
but as gospel.

Simple.
Sacred.
Enough.

@okelododdychitchats

It must Be a Beautiful Death

It Must Be a Beautiful Death

Let it come like a sigh,
like the silence between waves,
like the slow separation of a ribbon,
loosened by the hands of time.
No violence. No suddenness.
Just the peaceful folding of the day into night,
a quiet hand-over to the pull of the tide.

Let it not be an end,
but an opening,
a door swinging wide to something big and golden,
a breath released, not stolen.
Let it feel like stepping into warm water,
like sinking into silk,
like the weight of the world slipping from tired shoulders.

Something will rise from the silence.
It always does.
A blade of green through frost-bitten earth,
a flame that flickers but never dies,
a heart that stops only to be remembered
in the sound of another’s breath.
Life does not go. It stays.
It clings to the air, to the hands that once held it,
to the laughter built into the walls of an old house.

It must be a beautiful death,
the kind that smiles instead of weeps,
that glows instead of dims,
that steps lightly into the unknown,
leaving warmth where it once stood.
Not a Disapearance, but a soft dissolve,
like sugar in tea,
like smoke curling into the sky.

Something sweet will remain.
A voice Singing in the quiet of morning,
a scent-faint yet familiar-caught on the wind.
The way their name still tastes on your tongue.
Love is stubborn.
It does not bow to time.
It finds itself into the cracks of your bones,
into the spaces between dreams.

And something great will rise from the silence
A light in the dark,
a constellation drawn from the ashes,
a name that refuses to be forgotten.
No one is ever truly gone
if their love still stains the walls of the world.

It must be a beautiful death,
not because it does not pain,
but because it matters,
because it leaves fingerprints on the soul,
because it whispers through the wind,

I was here. I loved. I lived.
And somewhere, somehow, I still do.

@okelododdychitchats

It’ll Take all of Us

I walk the familiar paths,
their beauty dulled by the litter that lines them.
Plastic bottles, discarded wrappers,
a shoe missing its pair,
a trail of neglect that’s hard to ignore.
Why always here?
Why do we treat our home this way?

The roads are heavy with filth,
the air thick with fumes and frustration.
Bins stand idle, waiting for use,
while rivers, once full of life,
carry the weight of our waste.
Water, meant to be clear and pure,
now tells a different story, A very dark story.

I step carefully, dodging the trash.
An empty soda can here,
a torn newspaper dancing in the wind.
Is it so hard to care?
So hard to find a bin,
to think beyond the moment?

I search the faces around me,
hoping for answers, but find none.
Just more garbage, plastic bags snagged on trees,
cigarette butts crushed into the dirt,
fast food wrappers blowing like tumbleweeds.

It makes me sad,
not just for the streets,
but for the way we’ve let them become this way.
The beauty of Eastlands
hidden under piles of indifference.

I bend down,
pick up a piece of litter,
and toss it into a nearby bin.
It feels small, insignificant,
but it’s something.

I know it’ll take more than one person,
more than one act,
to fix this mess we’ve created.
It’ll take all of us,
a shared sense of responsibility,
to bring life back to these streets.

Still, I dream,
of rivers running clear,
of air free of smoke,
of roads where the only footprints
are those left by hopeful feet.

Until that dream becomes reality,
I’ll keep walking these paths,
beautiful but broken,
reminding myself that change
starts with me.

@okelododdychitchats