9/14
in my mother's house, i eat mandazi's for breakfast. for lunch, i consume pilau and for dinner i devour ugali na sukuma wiki. my tongue is loose and my words are quick. i like to talk to lions as we travel from school to home. they protect me from the stones that bite at my unsheltered feet and they are my only form of travel. we talk about a land across the sea. a land of dreams and movies and cameras. i wish that simba could take me there. he drops me home and comes back at the crack of dawn to pick me up.
at my mother's house, the grass is organic. there are no substances in it and we don't fight the insects who are just trying to find a home in our yard. the world is green. there are trees and there are flowers of all the colors. i sing to the flowers every sunday and their petals are renewed. i pick the red ones for my mother, the green ones for my brother, a beetle for my other brother, and the purple ones for myself.
the sun always greets me and he wraps me in his arms every morning. i swim in the lake on saturday's and i bring home a basket of ripe mangoes. the berries on the trees are succulent and simba and i eat until our stomachs turn berry blue and rosy red.
this is how life is. or, at least i think so.
i don't live at my mother's and my memories of her are as cold as blurred as cursory as thin as morning fog in february.
