4. REPENTANCE
DoBH – DN2 ‘23
October 1st 2023
But if I am empty,
What am I pouring out?
I am perched, thirsty even,
Like a desert yearning for rain.
I am hungry, not for food,
But for meaning, like a starved soul.
I am lacking, a hollow vessel adrift.
I know the bearing:
North, probably south,
But I am heading east, chasing shadows.
West is calling to me too, a siren’s song.
So I decide to stay still,
In this hopelessness,
In this despair, a stagnant pond.
I am yet to find myself.
Must I really hit rock bottom,
A shipwreck sinking into the abyss?
Why can’t it just be a little step back,
A minor retreat, a leaf in the wind?
Must it be the whole journey, a relentless odyssey?
I gained the weight back,
Like burdens clinging to my spirit.
I went back to my bottle,
A false friend in a glass prison.
And I picked up smoking too,
Breathing in my own destruction.
Give me a goddamn break,
Universe, really?
You will do me like this?
I thought we were getting somewhere.
Somewhere can’t be here.
Here is empty, a barren wasteland.
Here is broken, shattered glass.
Here hurts, a wound that won’t heal.
To rise, I guess we have to fall,
A phoenix through the flames.
This fall feels personal,
Like a conspiracy,
Like a bad movie with a mad director.
Turns out it is me,
The mad director on the big chair,
Orchestrating my own chaos.
Didn’t I just learn I was the god?
The god of my own life.
I create, I destroy.
I build, I demolish.
My own biggest critic.
My own heaven,
My own hell.
And here it is scorching,
A hellfire of my own making.
By the looks of it, pulling a Nebuchadnezzar,
Madness in the wilderness.
It really does rain before it pours,
Storm clouds gathering.
But awareness is a double-edged sword,
A mirror reflecting both hope and despair.
At least in knowing, there lies the seed of change,
A flicker in the darkness, a dawn on the horizon.
Deborah Nyamu,
DoBH,
2024.
