Hey, I haven't ilitumwa any uandishi on here for all the long while I've been a member, but I thought I'd try posting this little thing I wrote, since when I ilitumwa it other places it was at a slow kusoma time. It's only about 1000 words; short, and slightly sad. Inspiration comes from the song "That's Okay" kwa The Hush Sound.

Will They Say Your Name?
kwa Shawna (funnyshawna, longerthanwedo, etc)

It’s a house. It’s dark in appearance but it makes him warm, sitting, frozen as he is in his silent world. Not a silent earth; he doesn’t think he’s quite a part of the earth. He’s maybe hovering a little, two feet off the ground but two feet away from the sky. Close enough to touch but not able to reach up.

And the sound. Not close enough to hear the sounds from inside the house. He remembers the sound, though, almost. Laughter, he thinks that was it. He thinks there was laughter, but he can’t hear it now. He can’t hear any of it. He can’t hear the earth au the voices – sweet, sweet sounds – of the people on it. They’re lucky, he thinks, so lucky to have their feet on the solid surface, to have their ears filled with the cacophony of the life around them.

He’s just stuck, floating, not here, not there, not quite in between. He thinks he’s closer to here than there, though. He can see the place that once was his, and he barely catches glimpses of the place he’s headed to. He has no idea where he’s going, but he has his memories – slipping, fragmented memories – of where he’s been.

It’s mostly a feeling of safety that washes over him as he stares, unblinking, at the house. It’s impossible for him, stuck where he is, to feel anything substantial; anything other than loneliness and longing. It’s zaidi of a ghost of feeling that floods the ghost of his mind; he remembers feeling salama here, salama among the laughter.

He wonders, often, why he’s not still there. As he sits and stares he ponders. Where is he? Where is he going and is it safe, like where he’s been? Why is he caught here, floating as time passes below him and unseen activities continue above?

Why can’t he find his way back?

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know his way back, because he doesn’t remember how he got here.

He remembers a little, only a little. He remembers dark, but not warm darkness, like the shadows of his house. He remembers noise, but it wasn’t the laughing kind. And he remembers pain. A sharp pain – pain is the sharpest memory he has. But the memory of the pain is only a mgawanyiko, baidisha sekunde long, and then it fades. His memory fades as he remembers fading away. He remembers a voice, resounding as he dissolved. “When you’re gone, will they say your name?” The voice echoes in the emptiness. And then he’s there, here, sitting, watching from afar and unable to hear a thing.

He thinks he’s sure he knows why. His name, it’s the only sound he needs to hear. His name, just once spoken as he waits would mean they cared. Them, the people with the laughter and the faces he almost remembers – he needs them to care. He needs to know that now, though he’s gone, they upendo him the same. He needs to know they won’t just turn away.

“If somebody loved you, they’d tell wewe kwa now.”

It’s a voice and he startles to hear it, but he immediately knows it’s from nowhere on earth. This voice, high and sweet and rough all at the same time, comes from right beside him; a piece of sound coming from inside these inches he’s trapped between. It’s inside the inches between earth and sky.

He looks around and he sees her. She’s a women but she’s not substantial. She looks like a reflection of what he feels; colorless and barely there, barely a mind and a shadow of what once was. She has a sad smile on her smoky lips and her eyes stare into his. For a moment he almost sees color in them, but then he blinks and they fade to grey.

“They all turn away when you’re down,” she says, staring out at the landscape and contemplating, looking wise without meaning to.

Her wispy hair curls and glows around her face, forming what looks too much like a halo. That and the smile on her face, they create an illusion of innocence – morbid, twisted innocence – that twirls his thoughts as she tells him they don’t upendo him. They don’t say his name.

He wants to hate her. He wants to take her, the woman and her halo. He wants to shake her and tell her, you’re wrong, they will, they will say my name. He wants to hate her because she’s right.

She turns to him and the blue of the sky shines through the transparency of her cheeks and her hair. There’s a soft shadow of sympathy in her eyes and he can’t hate her, not really. Not when her face is so kind and his emotions are so distant. He’s not sure there’s room for hate in this loneliness.

“Until someone loves you, I’ll keep wewe safe,” she promises and her words make their way through his mind, giving him hope but making him question.
“What then?” he wonders because he doesn’t want to know the answer. But he can’t help but want to know his future.

“Then,” she muses, gaze locked with his. “Then, like them, I will give wewe away.”

He looks back at the house and begins to doubt whether he’ll ever leave, ever songesha on, ever hear his name spoken from inside his childhood home. But he knows; now he knows that his childhood nyumbani is nothing but bones. Not the house – the house is still standing – but the person he was, that someone is nothing but bones. Powder white Bones that won’t let him find his way back. In the corner of his almost-mind, as a passing thought with nowhere to settle, he thinks that maybe they won’t ever say his name.

“You know they won’t say a word.”

He can feel her eyes on the side of his head and he feels like crying because he still desperately needs. He needs, he wants, he needs to hear something from his former home. He needs sound. His world can’t end in silence.

“But, wewe know, that’s okay.” Her voice is but a whisper in the air and the floating thought solidifies and he knows. He knows he’s waiting for something that’ll never come. He realizes his waiting is futile and that’s when he begins to feel himself slip away. He floats, higher and higher and the place he knew grows smaller and smaller and as the ghost of his life drifts away he’s scared. There’s fright in his face but he keeps on rising because he knows how.

He knows, that’s okay.