if I am to believe in anything,

i believe in the stars.

i believe in the glint the moon gives though a car door window.

i believe in the scattered freckles of lanterns in the sky,

eternally held in place until you

blink and they shift ever so slightly

in pursuit of the moon.

i believe in my mother.

i believe in the womb i was born from.

the umbilical cord.

SNAP the string snapping which once tied us together into one being until i’d begin bawling,

bawling,

bawlin,

ballin,

no, not ballin on the basketball court but bawling for the love found in a mother’s womb which until

seven in the afternoon had been extracted from my pre-life but before post-death state.

for the familiar.

for a mother’s touch, an embrace, anything close to what i had known for the entire past nine months

i’d spent as a leech clutching her for support.

for life.

for my existence, and now

for a comfort amidst the fact that a black body in a white world cannot exist peacefully but will burn,

but will be angry and what’s left is believing, believing.

believing in my father.

believing in the bottom of beer bottles which slowly, oh so slowly turned into wine.

believe in the late nights spent at a cousins house because, a “oh no, we have to wait for them to finish.“

believe in the way he used to be and the way he changed and he way it’s hard.

believe in how long it took to

forget, to

remember, to

forget, 

remember, forgive and clutch and hold on to that forgiveness and believe in the power of humanity and

remember it and look for brighter days.

younger days when you would be on his shoulders and he’d call you dear and baba and chepkogei and

anything other than the names everyone else used to mutter to you as passing greeting

because what is on my birth certificate is only legal and not as binding as the memories clinging to my

heart each day.

to believing in uncles who called me uncle in an accent, to a man who’d travel around the world with

two kids in kenya and one in the us and still have enough time to bring his favorite niece back a present,

a purse, a baby doll.

i believe in the gift of laughter that erupts from my uncles mouth as he sticks his tongue out (something

my little sister is keen to mention these days) and i believe in my inability to hate him

no matter what demons were brought into my father’s life because everything has a meaning, and

every moment has a reason, and

one individual, one brother alone cannot ruin another’s life.

and yet we keep on turning and turning page after page in this novel, life, and i can’t stop

believing in the power of a religion to cast away it’s undesirables.

emboldened in fear, milked by the patriarchy, black, womyn, gay, what is left to save if my pieces

haven’t been won over?

how centuries ago, weapon of destruction, now the same with a beautiful face

i believe in the ability to make myself uncomfortable by denouncing the book that nurtured me with

falsehoods.

i believe in my brother who i looked at up and down, and

labeled “better than me”, and

remove the words, destroying my perception, in case he believes that he lives in my shadow.

i believe in him.

i believe in my sister who a decade younger than me, who is yet to grow and unlikely to face every last

one of my struggles, but who will grow with my nose and my body and my skin, the dark pigmentation

which casts us as african and i believe in her ability to succeed

i believe in the stars because they were once my only friends, and

now that there is more than one light in my life,

believing is the platform

upon which i voice the echos of my dreams