Simply Hope

The sky pulls a charcoal blanket over its shoulders,
heavy and weeping.
From a great height, the rain descends,
turning the world into a place of hiding,
a place where we fold ourselves small
behind locked doors,
wishing to vanish with the light.

But the atmosphere is restless.
A sudden fracture of silver splits the grey,
and the silence is startled
by the loud, golden arrival of the sun.

It isn’t just light,
it is a prism breaking across the horizon,
the earth looking up and finally smiling back.
The air feels new,
charged with that sudden, sharp pain of romance,
the kind that arrives when you realized
you survived the storm.

We learn then,
watching the shadows dissolve into nothing,
that darkness is a poor tenant.
It has no permanent address here.
The light is the only thing
that knows its way home.

@doddyokelo

A Simple Faith

It begins as a fracture in the monolith of night,
not a flood, but a thin, insistent silver
widening the door.

We call it belief,
but it functions more like a spine,
the invisible architecture that holds us upright
when the gravity of the world
tries to pull us into the dust.

To trust the Unseen is to plant a garden
in the middle of a drought,
knowing the rain is already traveling
toward you from a horizon you cannot yet see.

It is the alchemy of the soul,
turning a desperate plea into a rooted hallelujah,
folding the abyss of a thousand whys
into the quietude of a single yes.

When the world loses its voice to the thunder,
faith provides the dialect of peace.
It is the power to stand amidst the ruins
and speak of the rising song yet to be built.

@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

Daughter of The Mountain

I met her on an afternoon
when the sun burned low,
spilling gold across the earth
as though the day itself leaned close
to let slip its quiet confessions.

She was slim-thick,
a flame held steady in the wind,
with a presence that filled the space
more surely than height or breadth could command.
Her skin bore the quiet radiance
of fertile Kenyan earth after rain,
luminous, alive with the memory of rivers.

Her beauty was the beauty that stays,
like a song remembered long
after the singer has gone.
Her eyes were wide, dark pools,
holding the innocence of unspoken dreams,
and the fierce pride of the hills,
green and ancient,
keepers of stories older than memory.
When she looked, it was not merely at you,
it was into you,
as though the soul were something
she had always known,
and only sought to confirm.

Her laughter was small, quick,
yet it carried,
like the delicate chiming of cowbells
drifting from a far valley.
Her movements, precise, almost shy,
the way a swallow folds its wings before flight,
yet within them was a grace
no stage could rehearse.

She was not made of ornaments or excess
but of silences,
of natural songs,
of that soft balance between fragility
and unyielding strength.

To call her beautiful
would be to simplify what was infinitely complex.
She was the outline of twilight
against the ridge,
the fragrance of tea leaves
crushed between fingers,
the silence of evening rain on tin roofs.
She was the Mountain itself,
its promise, its mystery,
its unbroken spirit made flesh.

And in her presence,
I felt the world pause,
as though even time leaned in
to watch her pass.

@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

Light of My Days

There are many names for a woman,
but none that speak your fullness,
you are dawn in its first whisper of gold,
a soft psalm wrapped in morning light,
a cathedral of calm where my heart kneels,
finding faith again in the sound of your voice.

You walk as if the earth remembers your kindness;
flowers lift their faces in your passing.
Your laughter, a river that knows its way home,
sculpts joy across the landscape of our days.
Even silence becomes sacred when shared with you,
for you breathe poetry into the air itself.

Once, you were a girl with suns in her eyes,
and the world crowned you mother,
not with jewels, but with gentle burdens,
and you bore them like grace itself.
Your hands stitched comfort into chaos,
turning hunger into hope, noise into hymn.

In your eyes, I have seen God’s tender art,
the patience of oceans, the courage of storms.
You are the soft peace that follows heartbreak,
the reason broken wings learn to fly again.
Your love has been both shelter and sword,
cutting fear from the edges of my name.

Every word I’ve ever spoken carries your echo,
each dream is scented faintly with your prayers.
You are the unseen flow in my becoming,
the quiet architect of my strength.
When I stumbled, you became the ground beneath me,
steady, forgiving, endlessly near.

What language could ever hold your worth?
What poet could bind your light in ink?
You are not to be described, but felt,
like rain, or grace, or home after exile.
And so, I do not thank you with words,
but with the life you helped me build.

Here’s to you, Mum,
keeper of warmth, bearer of mornings,
woman of endless tomorrows.
May joy drape you like silk at sunrise,
and time bow gently before your smile.
You are every beautiful thing I know.

Happy Birthday,
for the world grew softer the day you were born,
and I have been blessed to call its miracle Mother.

@doddyokelo

New, and New Again

There is a lantern burning in the darkened orchard, its flame steady though the winds conspire against it. So is my heart, unshaken by storm, for it has taken your name as its eternal wick. No night has been so deep that your light did not find me there.

There is a river that bends and bends again, yet never loses its way to the sea. My devotion follows. Each thought of you is a current, each dream of you is a tide, until all of me is poured into the great ocean of your being.

There is a star that stays when the dawn has claimed the sky, a lone sentinel of night’s mystery. That star is the memory of your eyes, refusing to fade though the day demands dominion. Even in the crowded brilliance of life, it is you I see, burning beyond the reach of time.

There is a music that no instrument can summon, yet I hear it whenever your spirit brushes mine. It is the song of beginnings, the hymn that shepherded the first lovers through gardens of wonder. It comes to me as though the world were created anew each moment I think of you.

There is a door that opens in silence, where absence becomes presence, and distance is folded into breath. Each time you cross my mind, you do not return as you were, but as something more, a revelation sharpened by longing, softened by tenderness.

There is a secret, older than scripture yet younger than every heartbeat: that to love is to discover eternity within the hour. I touch your soul not as one who has known, but as one astonished still, as though my lips had just now learned the miracle of your name.

There is, at last, this vow, not sculpted in stone, but written in the quickening blood of a heart undone. I will meet you again and again as though for the first time, a pilgrim at the gates of wonder. And when the world is ash and the sky a forgotten scroll, my love shall still be there, new, and new again.

@okelododdychitchats

In the Dust, A Pulse

I like to seek the treasure hidden in the dust.
To lift what is broken, what others have thrown aside,
and hold it until it speaks.

There is a life in things the eye does not see,
a cup that has forgotten the lips it once touched,
a blade that once sang in the air,
a flower that still dreams of sun though it is ash.

I do not take them as they are.
I search for what they wanted to be.
I listen for the pulse beneath their silence,
for the promise that time could not keep.

And in that quiet,
I find something greater than beauty,
the truth that nothing is ever truly lost,
only waiting to be seen again.

@okelododdychitchats

When I Fall in Love

When I fall in love,
it will be as though the earth itself
has drawn breath beneath my feet,
and I will know,
for the first time,
that I am alive.

I will want her always,
not as the moon wants the tide,
but as roots want the rain,
as a flame longs for the wick
that lets it burn.

In joy,
I will laugh beside her
until our voices rise like larks
and scatter in the morning sun.
I will hold her close,
so close that my heartbeat
resonates with hers.

In sorrow,
I will be her shelter,
a quiet roof beneath the storm,
my hands the cloth
that wipes away each falling tear,
my chest the place
where grief can come to rest.

When I fall in love,
every waking moment
will be a prayer of gratitude,
every sleeping hour
a dream where her name
blooms like jasmine
on my tongue.
I will gather each instant,
not to keep it,
but to cherish it,
like pearls
slipped gently through my fingers.

And when I must leave,
when parting presses its bitter kiss
upon our lips,
I will miss her
before I have even gone,
and yearn for the soft resurrection
of our next “hello.”

When I fall in love,
the shadows of old wounds
will wither,
their traces silenced
by the music of her being.
I will find courage
where once there was none,
and I will walk through fire
with bare feet
and an unshaken heart.

When I fall in love,
I will want only this:
for her joy to rise like dawn,
for her soul to sing
as though the heavens themselves
were listening,
for her to feel,
deep in her marrow,
that she is the most cherished
among all living things.

For that is what I will feel
when I fall in love,
with her.

@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