5. Even in death, we heal.
DoBH – Kay ’23
October 29th 2023
He was skinny – short.
Much is said about this kind of man—
Monkey tales and whatnot.
It was good,
Very good.
On top, looking into his dead eyes;
I always came alive.
Maybe that’s why I stayed so long,
Or maybe it was because he was safe,
A religious man,
Praying enough times a day to keep the devil at bay.
I was hidden; no evil could reach me.
In a graveyard,
Even the living are props,
Alive enough to dance with the devil,
Dead enough to rot away in time.
With probation fast approaching,
That dreaded question hung in the air,
It needed no asking—
If you have to, you know the answer.
Where is this going?
I laughed,
Why did I even bother?
In this graveyard, looking into those lifeless eyes,
What did I expect?
A broken heart.
This one I had gone looking for,
I found it among grave custodians.
It took a month to crawl out,
And even then I missed the lifelessness of it all.
I missed how we just were—THERE.
No goals, no expectations,
Just two people giving whatever life we could to each other.
There wasn’t much.
Sounds sad, but it was safe.
As bizarre as it may seem,
That’s what I needed at that time.
It healed bigger wounds,
Left tiny sores I could heal by myself.
I waited until he found a live one,
I walked out with a less broken heart.
Even in the stillness of death, we learn to mend.
Deborah Nyamu,
DoBH,
2024.
