Bunguswa Writes.

We built our tomorrows with trembling hands, Wearing promises like wedding bands of dawn, Yet somewhere between our laughter’s pause, A hush began to haunt the edges of your eyes, And I mistook it for peace, not pain. The moon knew what I didn’t — That silence is a wound that bleeds without red. Your words became feathers floating nowhere, And your smile, a curtain hiding slow goodbyes, While I sang to ghosts of our engagement. I sent you poems wrapped in unasked questions, But your replies came in echoes too faint to hold. The wind carried your absence like a letter, Stamped with something the living can’t deliver, And still, I waited at the altar of denial. Your laughter had once been the rhythm of rain, Now it fell in whispers against my chest. Leukemia — your hidden thief of hours — Was sipping light from your veins in secret, While I mistook your stillness for healing. How foolish the heart that prays without listening, That calls your quiet a form of grace. I thought ...

CHAPTER ONE: THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO BEND. Kenya remembers him not as a man, but as a season. A long, defiant season that refused to end when the clocks of comfort demanded silence. When history bowed before tyrants, one voice—trembling yet unbroken—rose like thunder beneath forgotten clouds. That voice was Raila Amolo Odinga. I, the land that birthed him, have known his footsteps before I knew his name. They were the kind that pressed the soil not in haste, but with purpose—as if even the dust beneath his feet needed awakening. In those early mornings by the lake, when fishermen cast their nets into uncertain waters, his mother whispered a prayer to the waves: Let this one carry the weight of justice like a calabash of fire, and never spill. The year was 1945—an age when the world still reeled from war, and Kenya’s sky hung heavy with the smoke of colonial grief. In Maseno, where the grass bends to the whispers of wind, a child cried. But his cry was different. It was long,...

Kenya wakes in black scarves of dawn, her rivers kneeling, whispering your name RAYILA. The sun halts halfway through its duty— it too cannot believe a torch can dim. You were the storm that learned to speak gently, a lion who roared through prisons of silence, your voice a wind bending history’s spine, your eyes—two moons over the valley of struggle. Today, the soil remembers your footsteps, each grain trembling beneath Uhuru’s tree. The wind from Kibera hums your unfinished hymn, and Lake Victoria weeps into her blue shawl. Even stones, those proud witnesses of time, crack open—revealing red roots of remembrance. We the children of your stubborn dream, walk barefoot through your legacy’s ash. O Raila, son of Odinga, freedom’s last syllable rests upon your lips. You taught us that dying is not defeat, but the final verse of a people’s song. Sleep now, baba wa taifa, beneath a sky stitched with your own courage. The tears we shed are not of despair— they are rivers returnin...

Chapter One: The Lounge of Broken Mirrors The first time I walked into Barbra’s Lounge, I carried the smile of a man who still believed the world could be tricked by performance. I had learned how to laugh loudly enough to distract even my own demons, and Barbra’s became the stage where my mask glittered the most. The waiters knew me as that cheerful fellow who cracked jokes with strangers, lifted glasses in toasts that celebrated nothing in particular, and swayed to the music as though joy itself had leased my body for the night. But that laughter was not joy—it was camouflage. Behind it lingered a man who had stumbled through the ruins of a failed graduation, whose degree was now nothing more than a half-burnt paper in the mind, a certificate whose absence mocked him like a missing tooth. Behind it lay a failed relationship, the kind that doesn’t just leave you lonely but leaves you hollow, scraping echoes in the chest where tenderness once lived. Behind it crouched poverty, the stub...

I carry no roses, only the dust of my journey, yet in your eyes I plant orchards of forever. My shirt is torn, but the wind stitches it with hymns only the poor can hear at dusk. The world mocks the man whose coins are silence, but I write wealth on your palms with my breath. Love, they say, is a bird fed on golden crumbs, but ours drinks rainwater from tin cups. Your laughter is the roof I cannot buy, your touch the blanket my wages could not weave. Let them build mansions with currencies of glass— I will build a kingdom from the patience of stars. For even a beggar, when kissed by dawn, owns a sunrise the rich cannot purchase.

The school assembly hall was buzzing with chatter as students filed in. Ryan stood near the back, supervising as usual. He wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a watchful presence—an assistant teacher fresh out of college, barely older than some of the students. Then she walked up to the podium. Molly, the student council president. The hall quieted under her voice. “Good morning, everyone,” she said firmly. “We’ll keep this assembly brief, so listen closely.” Ryan’s eyes followed her with quiet admiration. She carried herself differently—confident, poised, yet warm. When she finished and dismissed the school, he found himself clapping a second longer than necessary. Steady, he warned himself. She’s a student. Nothing more. But life has a way of breaking even the strictest rules we set for ourselves. --- A week later, after a debate competition, Molly approached him while he was gathering papers. “Sir,” she began softly. Ryan looked up. “Yes, Molly?” “You explained that...