Rehearsing for Rain
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I buy myself a blue second-hand coat,
change my mind: it’ll fit you better.
tangerines, grapes, pomegranates, mangoes in season,
I stock up on mabuyus, kashatas, chevda, simsims,
permanent ink for date of birth and government names
we discarded a long time ago,
so that they’ll be able to identify our bodies,
inform families that discarded us a long time ago.
I shower and shower so that the police dogs,
if/when they finally come, will not mistake us
for anyone else, for a harem,
even when duplicity was our pose.
I sniff your body one last time,
clean the walls and kitchen sink with something industrial,
cut your nails and cuticles back to factory settings,
we fold the linens for the first time in our shared life,
burn the letters that can never be read
outside a therapist’s office.
And now you are mine for the flood,
in the flood, with the torrents of memory,
your tailfin already showing,
how your precious gill catches the Nairobi sun,
a light we will never know.