Car bump.

A winter doesnt come without ice. When the temperature drops so low that water doesnt remain water, it toughens and coats. When it coats tarmac, it is invisible and you will know it is there when your car finds its own navigation method. My first encounter to ice was on a rainy short day. I went to work in daylight, and when I left the building, at 4pm it was dark outside, and cold. I drove off on my way, my thoughts engrossed in the rest of my day and on the chores that lay waiting for me at home. Getting off the highway, I had to stop at the exit on my turn. The brakes were working, but the car was not doing what it was meant to do. It continued to proceed towards the stationary cars ahead. Still gliding ahead, it gently and came to a stop when it nudged the first car in its wake.
I sat mortified behind the wheel as the man in the car ahead came out and walked towards me. I was going to be in trouble, I was in a van and he was in a small car. My car may have demolished his car. I got out of the car and heard him surprise me. "Are you okay, sweetheart?" he asked looking at me not at his car. I could only say how sorry I was, and over the sound of my voice I heard him say, "If you are okay, I think you should be off on your way home, love. Dont worry, it's only a car."
I sat behind the wheel again and started the car, the lights were turning green and I drove off. I wanted to take the car registration number of the man who was so kind towards me, to somehow find his contact and send him a card. Christmas was almost here, he should know he has been nice.

The first time I came to Canada, I was amused to see people in shorts, washing their cars, cleaning their garages and taking walks for leisure. It was cold outside, and for me, a Kenyan, it was not outdoorsy weather. It was the kind of weather to make a fire in a stove, and sit fully covered in a warm shawl around it, maybe, but not, playing in water, hosing down the driveway.
I left Canada with that impression and returned to live here a few years later. We landed here in the height of winter and began the usual running around for the paperwork that needs to be done in order to install ourselves into the system. And we looked for jobs.
If winter was a shock, it did not register much because we were busy beginning our lives here. But the shock was the word job. Nowadays, I hear it in my Kenyan friend's language, but when we came here, we in Kenya, did not have jobs, we worked. We looked for work and we had careers. A job was something like a toil, a difficult chore is what it meant.
To get a job here was easier than I had imagined, but as soon as I got the job, I realised that the turnover of people at the place of work, not only mine, but almost everywhere, was high. The loyalty was not there. The loyalty of the person working in the firm or the recognition of the person who did the work by the firm. This is a culture in the system of employment I found here, which made me rather feel uneasy at the time. On my first day at work, I witnessed a man being fired. I might have stared a little more than I was expected to, and the chill running down my spine might have been visible to the office administrator who was doing the firing, but she did not show it. I could not understand how lightly the man was taking it. Maybe, I thought, he deserves this, he doesn't look like a man who cares much and so he lacked decorum in his work. But in the days that followed, I learned how dedicated the man was, and how diligently he worked, which showed not the signs of the man who stood smilingly accepting being sacked. I learned that he was sacked because he had been late to work three times in a week.
I am a little Canadianised now, I take to the outdoors when I see a slight rise in the mercury, worship the sun, I do. And when I am deep in the heaps of snow that come down, I always think of my fellow Kenyans, who during the months of our winter, are awash in the hottest part of their year. I can almost hear them complaining about the heat, about the drought that has left them in cruel power and water rations. And it is cruelly cold here and we too endure a lot, but the country is run for the people and when I walk into the house, I am warm because there is power and I can take a nice long bath, because water runs in the tap whenever I open it.

Friends

Friends don't always call to say Hello,
They live in the pieces of the jigsaw of my life
When is there the time to say Hello
When they are so busy completing me.

Snooze.

Sleep?
Of course, every mother forgets
the meaning of that word.
Everytime I hear it,
I find myself wondering
that thing called sleep
was it something
I took for granted or something I treasured
... or was it the name of a pet I lost some time ago?

Cherish me

I click on the email icon
My eyes want to see your name in the inbox
and my chest knots up while the computer creeps
and shows me
nothing

I will settle for a reply from any HR office
for the many I send
anyone
my heart sinks
nothing

So I go back and forth doing home things
and whenever I come to the computer and click again
hoping
just a forwarded forward from no one but from you
nothing

and so my sad day wears on
fifty sixty times a day
wishing for something from you
hoping you care enough to send me a line but
nothing

and when you come home
you dont even know
you dont even see
how sad I have been for so many days, I am
nothing

Just because the headlines dont say

Just because the headlines don’t say,
The media is wrong

Or that insatiable and ravenous
Don’t mean gluttony but National Pride

Doesn't mean you don’t understand
That things are not always as they say

Bags n Boxes

Ask, a preacher once told me when I was little
Ask for whatever you want
Ask God He will listen.

I was confused because I didn't know
how to ask for what I wanted
I had never heard anyone need what I needed

I asked a girl, a friend and she said
ask for gifts for things from shops
Gifts in boxes, in bags

But I did not want a gift that could be packed
and broken or stolen or taken for granted
a gift made by a someone, human just like me.

I needed special somethings that no one had
that no one wanted and no one could take away
boxes and bags can never hold what no other can have

I get everything I ever wish without delay
Gifts not from the God of the Preacher
but a baffling God who sends even as I am asking

I wish for ingots of peace
of laughter in friendship and
and quietness in my mind

Gifts in bags and boxes can be re-gifted or returned
Returned like we are to God, resting in Bags and Boxes
put away where no one ever can touch us

When I return I'll leave no jumble,
no clutter to bag and box,
I lived free outside the bags and boxes.

By: Tasnim Jivaji