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

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

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

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

Monday, But Why ?

I am tired,
shrunken, chilled, and worn at the cuffs of my soul.
The night itself, a careless laundress,
folded me wrong and ironed in the creases of a bad mood.

My thoughts are heavy, they are a parade of strangers
wearing wet wool coats, stomping through the hallways of my mind.
And my intellect is bald, yes, but worse,
a barren, frozen tundra where not a single rebellious idea
has the audacity to sprout.

It is Monday.
the same old cracked vinyl of a gloomy chorus,
stuck, skipping, repeating the universal dullness.
My strength is a barometer at zero,
my motivation a phone on airplane mode.

This is the taste of it,
Monday, served on a cold porcelain plate.
Bitter at the edges, bland and beige in the middle,
a main course of immediate responsibilities.

But really,
why must Monday always show up like a guest who never takes the hint to leave?

@doddyokelo

Man Enough to Cry

I know, I’m a man, yes, the great pillar of might and muscle,
The one who never trembles, never falters, never feels.
Society’s favorite statue, polished, silent, hollow.
But save that sermon, really, keep your “men don’t cry” gospel.
I am human, not granite shaped for your comfort, I bleed too, I just hide it better.

Oh, how noble it must look, dying quietly inside,
Smiling wide with a cracked soul, calling it strength.
You call it “African masculinity,” I call it emotional suicide.
I can’t drink your bravery forever, it burns going down.
Sometimes I just want to exhale without the label “weak,” without the world mistaking honesty for failure.

Let me speak, even if my words leak salt and sorrow.
Don’t hand me depression and call it dignity.
If tears offend your tradition, good, let them flood it.
I’d rather drown honest than live pretending I’m steel.
After all, even lions cry, you just don’t stay long enough to hear it roar in pain.

@doddyokelo

Dreams of You

There’s a smooth quiet caressed across the night tonight, a velvet calm that drifts between heartbeats and carries your name upon the slow breath of the wind. I can almost hear your laughter threading through the silence like moonlight through lace, reminding me what peace feels like when love finds its way home.

To be loved by you is to rest inside calm waters after a storm, warmth flowing like quiet light, a tender ease that tells my heart it has arrived. It’s not mere affection, it’s devotion that mends the soul and slows even the restless stars.

I find myself missing your company more than words could dare explain. You have that gentle way of turning absence into longing and longing into poetry. Even from afar, your presence stays like a soft perfume in the air, written through my thoughts, through the gentle cadence of my breath, through the still corners of my room.

Tonight, the world feels a little bluer, a little emptier, because I want you here beside me. I crave the comfort of your voice, the safety of your arms, the laughter that folds itself into love. You’ve become the quiet I reach for when everything else grows too loud.

So as the night settles and dreams begin to bloom, may you rest easy knowing you’re deeply loved, by me, endlessly and truly. Sleep beautifully, my love. Good night.

@doddyokelo

Tailored To Your Ego

You teach me how to love,
like a tutor with a chalk of affection,
sketching rules on my heart’s blackboard,
telling me where to pause, where to ache,
how to sing your name.
And I, the willing fool, take notes,
hoping to pass your exam of devotion.

You say, be the best person you can be,
but only when that person pleases you.
How noble, how godly, how perfectly human
to mold me into a version of you,
and call it growth.
Love, you say, is sacrifice,
but it’s always my neck on the altar.

A romance tailor-made, you claimed,
stitched with precision and care,
fitted to the edges of your comfort zone,
hemmed with your insecurities,
fastened with silent rules I never signed.
Sorry, my love, correction,
fitted not for love, but your ego’s parade.

Still, I tried.
God knows, I tried.
And in the trying, I learned,
how love can shape a man into a shadow,
how tenderness can bruise if held too tight,
how devotion, when one-sided,
becomes self-destruction in silk.

You ask what I’ve learned in return?
That your affection has terms and conditions,
your heart is a subscription service
that renews only when I bow enough,
laugh enough, obey enough.
You call me names when I forget,
darling, I’ve never seen such poetry in cruelty.

You say you can’t do this anymore,
compare me to your gallery of ghosts,
men built in marble, flawless in memory.
And still, I stand there,
a living, breathing imperfection,
learning that your love speaks fluent disappointment.

So walk, my sweet torment.
Take your lessons, your mirrors, your masks.
You’ve taught me what love is not,
and that’s worth a diploma in heartbreak.
Go, darling devil,
your absence will be my peace,
and my freedom, finally tailored to me.

@doddyokelo

Why Would Another Man Reach for Another Man’s Crotch?

Saturday morning wears a coat of reluctant sun and wind-whipped dust. The cold has teeth. It doesn’t bite; it nibbles slowly, like a rat on wood, until it finds your bones. Dust hangs restless in the air, stirred by invisible hands, rising in small whirlwinds, then falling, settling on windowsills, eyelashes, and forgotten dreams.

My tap is dry. Hopeless Nairobi dry. It yawns and spits a dry cough as if mocking you. There’s a little water left in the blue bucket outside, barely enough for a quick shower. It won’t be the glorious Saturday morning cold shower I like, the one that sends tiny soldiers running on my skin, but water is water. I strip, splash, shiver, and step out.

I have thirty minutes to leave. Thirty minutes to catch up with Pie, Spiky, as I call her. My Pie. We’re catching up after a long time. 3 months, I guess.

I pull on black pants, last season’s Manchester United home jersey, Puma slides, sling my bag, and head to town.

It’s been three months since I walked these streets. Nairobi always changes when you’re gone. Shops sprout, pavements glow with new cabros, and faces you don’t know walk like they own the city. The streets are sardine-packed, humanity rubbing against humanity, yet in all that chaos, the pavements look…beautiful. Like they are trying too hard for a city that never slows down.

Spiky is on the other side of town, at Iconic Plaza, ground floor. She’s picking out perfume. She chooses something that smells like her alone, misty, woody, quiet but unforgettable. I smell it from those tiny folded scent papers, the ones that look like blue litmus strips, and I know this is a good one.

I’m here inquiring about a phone cover, but I can’t get one because my phone isn’t in the Kenyan market. To appreciate the attendant’s effort, Spiky decides to get a screen protector for her phone.

Next stop is EastWest Fashion for a jersey. EastWest is full. Weekend full. Bodies like migrating wildebeest. We do not find the specific jersey we are looking for, so we move on to downtown, Bus Station. We’re waiting for a vendor at Quickmart Mfangano, Spiky found them on TikTok. They sell good pants. She tries on five pairs and looks super good in all of them. I tell her so, because I am a man of honesty and survival instincts.

We then move to RNG Plaza for phone accessories. RNG is chaos. Shops full of indifferent attendants scrolling on their phones like they’re paid to ignore customers. We move from one shop to another, frustration swelling like a balloon. Just as we’re about to leave, we find one shop, a small, humble spot, where the attendant smiles like they’ve been waiting for us all their life. They listen, understand, do not rush. There is a patience to them, like still water under a hot sun. We get everything we need. We leave lighter, happier.

By now, it’s almost five. We’re hungry, and there is no time to sit and eat. Hotdogs and sodas from Naivas will do. And that’s when the world shifts.

We’re crossing the road when I feel it, a hand. Moving towards my thigh, no, my… flight deck. For a second, my brain refuses to register. Then it does. A touch. A graze. A violation. I turn sharply. An old man wearing a red beanie, black jacket, and ugly khaki pants that hang on him like shame.

My first instinct is to slap him. Call the mob. Let Nairobi justice, swift and merciless, have him. But I freeze. My feet are rooted, and my heart is pounding. He walks past, unbothered, as if reaching for another man’s crotch is a daily errand.

Spiky saves me. She grips my hand, pulls me forward. “Leave it,” she says. Her voice is firm, like a rope pulling me out of quicksand. Thank you, Jaber.

Inside, I’m binding everything by the blood of Jesus. Out loud too. Because, honestly, what else do you do when a strange man molests you on Ronald Ngala Street at 4:57 PM? I bind demons. I bind principalities. I bind ancestral spirits of confusion. Why? Because why would a man reach for another man’s crotch?

As we walk away, my mind churns. Was he trying to pickpocket me? Was he… that way inclined? Or was this some evil spirit manifestation? I’m angry, humiliated, confused. More than eighteen hours later, I’m still here, writing this, still asking the same question:

Why?

Why would another man reach for another man’s crotch?

@okelododdychitchats