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These days, 

I keep stretching my hands 

high above my head

for a glimpse of heaven, 

but I guess our wildness 

have evapourated so much 

into the cloud too. 

When I was five, 

I would cleanse my hands 

with heaven’s dew on the leaves, 

every morning. 

A way of saying, 

I too have touched heaven. 

When I clocked eight, 

Grandma named a garden after me to tend. 

In tending, was how my body first learned how to bloom. 

Now, I do not know how much doom lies ahead in my paths, 

nor the last time I had a feel of heaven. 

My feet want to retract to the beginning, 

For my hands to dig into the root, 

But I do not know where to make a placement. 

Was it when grandpa chopped the branch 

From which I caressed heaven one morning? 

Or when grandma would cut the leaves of the dogo yaro

For herbs, 

Till the tree sought for dignity in its nakedness? 

I grew to know green as light, 

but didn’t know how much darkness red could be. 

Red as in the fire quenching my garden, 

Spreading the shrink of darkness all over my body. I see my age grades these days, 

And we suffer a communal amnesia 

Of how garden tending used to be a culture, 

A module in our home training, 

To teach our bodies to bubble with rays of blood, 

I mean to say, like green as in light and life. 

But now, we all hawk how much change has penetrated into us. 

From housing green to nesting red. 

And now, every family compound in my community is 

a wilderness, 

And to find heaven resting here each morning is a miracle.