October, 2024

by ISAAC KANYINJI

A 2019 Survey on How People Imagine Themselves Dying

For Chipo

Asked

& I say like everybody else.

To mean in some overcrowded COVID-19 isolation facility,

swallowing pills while the news runs a story about another failed vaccine trial.

The doubts I house in that moment only allow me to think in the present:

I am not aware that the New Year will find us here,

in a Chipata Motel room watching the fireworks.

The year that almost drowned us coughing us onto dry land.

There is an untold side of the story where Jonah,

hours after being puked out of the shark’s belly,

plays beach volleyball with some fishermen.

Overjoyed to care if God has forgiven his disobedience,

he simply plays in the sand, singing his survival. 

In the isolated Chipata Motel room, we are unaware of what the New Year holds.

Yet, we celebrate with the strangers.

The joy of survival arrives too ripe to wait.