There are doors,

once entered,

that can never be exited

doors that open to loneliness,

finding you at 3 a.m.,

cloaked in holy emptiness,

asking,

“Has any of your blood

contemplated no longer living,

or are you the pioneer in this lineage?”

What a thing to add

to your name’s legacy

in the journey your ancestors’ dreams traced

from the waters lapping Mbuji-Mayi[1]

to a land cradling

the Allegheny.

The lack of will to breathe

was never their aspiration.

But my visions,

taste,

memory,

and heart

yearn for our lost life

to be breathed

into the solitude of my will.

I clutch the fear

of the colonial breed of my tongue,

the chasm torn between us.

My fractured grasp

of my mother’s tongue,

lost in the words closest to her heart,

has distanced us more than time,

pushing your story deeper

into the forgotten

unknown even

to our oral traditions.

If I joined you

by my own hand,

miraculously granted entry to Dilu,[2]

would you understand me?

The life I’ve lived

in your sacrifice?

It brings a new translation

to “never live to see.”

But it is in the names

you seared upon me

like prophecy,

bestowed by the breathing

and the transcended,

that I hold

like liturgical talismans,

hoping you call me

back from the edge.

And I will come.

If you call me by my names,

I will come…

Ngalula,

I live to the poetry of your heartbeat

born in Kasai[3].

I fight for your name

like sand slipping

through my hands.

Kapinga,

I live to the poetry of your memory

carved in Kasai.

I fight for your name

like sand slipping

through my hands.

Beatrice,

I live to the poetry of your breath,

woven in Kasai.

I fight for your name

like sand slipping

through my hands.

Names that were never my own

tether my breath to yours.

Echoes of your heartbeats

pulse through my veins

like our sacred rivers.

Luba[4],

etched in every curve

of my fingerprints

grasping for faith,

crying out for deliverance,

in the voice you gifted me,

the one name

you made my spiritual inheritance:

Nzambi[5],

Nzambi,

Nzambi.

[1] The capital city of Kasai-Oriental province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the city’s namesake the Mbuji-Mayi river

[2] Tshiluba term for "heaven"

[3] A region in the Democratic Republic of Congo predominantly inhabited by the Luba people

[4] One of the largest ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo

[5] Tshiluba for “God” or a “supreme deity”