Dust

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Akai-ma’s English, pockmarked, dragged through moonscapes, propped up by gesture and hacked into low-droned present-tense portions into which any number of languages were inserted.

“Everyone has at least four secrets.”

older women, lines beneath eyes, enmeshed by national subtexts, still hiding from anonymous bogeymen, still trying to plaster, with easy words, the fetid moral swamps engorged by the sludge of what a nation does, or does not do, with its freedom.

a person was best known by the questions he asked?

Finally, thank you, Kenya—my canvas, haunting, rage, passion, song, impulse, yearning, love, frustration, and inspiration, and your fierce, fun, and fascinating peoples, who laugh at themselves, and muddle hard toward a good ached for.