Time After Time
Like a rain cloud,
there’s a heaviness I come carrying
a weight that dulls the sunshine and
stirs uncertainty
will I fall
or pass through?
Like a rain cloud,
there’s a grandness I come carrying
a false cleansing
that will clear the roofs
but pool around my boots
a shower in which
there’s a recognisable newness;
more familiar than old.
Another April, another season,
another year. Where are you? In life or
on my way to you? Either. Close
Like a rain cloud,
there’s a load in my belly
yet to find its way
into my thighs.
It is protruding and intimidating
but really
given time, like a rain cloud,
it dissipates
Time after time,
like a rain cloud
I will leave you
all of me
And time after time,
like a rain cloud,
I will return again
and again and again…
Buy Her an Air Fryer
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
a body littered with ugly things
after Warsan Shire
Her tomatoes do not merge with the stew
Her floating onions invite suggestions…
she should have waited longer. Delicate
steps of heating oil, light frying proteins,
stirring, simmering and thickening gravy
are matched to memorised humour or
suspense on a Netflix episode. Her routine
of fitting hours of cooking
into a quick forty three minutes, wanting.
Her main courses lack integrity:
the rice is sticky; the ugali, a mix
of solidifying porridge burnt but
cold and raw at the centre;
and her chapatis, sit pretty
at the bottom of a purple waste bin
Her chest is filled with the unsaid
Her lovers complain of the sea
between her eyes and her tongue
Hurt people, hurt people
like the wind gathering all it can
only to empty itself of the same elsewhere
Sheila Ngei is a Kenyan creative poet, writer, editor, and sometimes singer. She is a recipient of both the 2025 Soka University scholarship to Tokyo, Japan and the 2024 Adventures From The Bedrooms of African Women Writers Fellowship. Her works voice and colour the continuous winding discovery of womanhood and appear in Qwani I & II anthologies, Volume Poetry, The Feminists in Kenya Resistance Issue, Strange Water Anthology, Luvsick Magazine, Kalahari Review, Adventures From The Bedrooms of African Women and others. She is currently co-working on an anthology titled, Lend Me Your Scream. A project that seeks to name, disturb, and erase the different silences women live with. She Instagrams as Chief’s_Sugar.
Cover photo credit: Min An