Chapter 2 - Long Night, Falling Thoughts
1994 Words
Blurred lines fade into dusk, and I am once again the echo of myself returning home. The streets are quiet, not in peace but in absence. My footsteps follow me like ghosts rehearsing the art of loneliness. The gate creaks open, and I whisper to no one, “I’m home.” Silence answers as it always does. The air inside is stale, a tired sigh trapped between the walls. The chair remembers me, the bed waits without warmth, and the clock ticks without empathy. I drop my keys on the table, and their metallic clang pierces the emptiness like a wound reopening. I have been in eight relationships. Eight chances to love. Eight times I believed in the resurrection of companionship. Eight graves I dug with hope. Each time, I thought it was redemption. Each time, I was wrong.
The house feels like a tomb of what-ifs. I look at the couch where once laughter might have existed. Now it’s a relic of imagined joy. My body aches for conversation, for a familiar voice that says, “You’re home.” But there’s only the humming of a distant refrigerator, that mechanical heartbeat reminding me that machines outlive emotions. I sit in the dark and let my thoughts simmer. They bubble, twist, and collide. I tell myself I’ll cook after a while. “Just an hour,” I say. I’ll make something—maybe french fries and pork chops. But I don’t move. The body feels tired not from work, but from the weight of its own existence. Thinking is a full-time job; living is overtime.
My mind begins to spin like clothes in a washing machine, tumbling, drenched in old memories. I see faces, some smiling, some crying. I see her the one who said forever and stayed for a season. The one who called me “love” and later called me “problem.” I can still feel the echo of her silent goodbye, soft but surgical was her exit in my life. What a drag, no chance at closure again. I lie down to ease myself. The bed feels cold. If I could, how I would be at bliss with you. I close my eyes, and the silence talks to me. There’s a moment when silence becomes tangible, like fog: it sits on the skin and seep into the soul. Questions heap up like a mountain I can’t climb. Why me? Why always me? Why does love evade me like light escaping a dying star?
It becomes black. The world disappears. My mind shuts down. Sleep comes, not as rest but as mercy. When I open my eyes again, it’s 10 p.m. The clock ticks, faithful in its cruelty. I sit up, groggy and hollow. The silence hasn’t moved; it stayed to watch me sleep. I grab my phone. I scroll through messages: long, tender conversations now reduced to a single word: “ok.”
A single word can end a world. “Ok,” such small letters carrying so much rejection. My stomach churns; my feet grow cold. I feel my heartbeat in my ears, a drumbeat of loss. I stare at the screen, waiting for it to light up again. It doesn’t.
Thoughts rush back like an army reclaiming lost territory. Racing thoughts, sharp and unforgiving. “Maybe I was too much.” “Maybe I was not enough.” “Maybe I was just… nothing.” I want to scream, but even my voice is tired of me.
“God, where art Thou?” I whisper into the void. There is no thunder, no whisper, no answer. Yet somehow, I feel His presence within my silence. The air thickens, and I know He’s there, just not in the way I expect.
The night stretches on. My mind wanders through corridors of memory and regret. I remember friends posting wedding pictures, their children laughing in the background. I scroll past them quickly, pretending not to care. But inside, something breaks quietly.
I am the leftover dream. The forgotten seed. The man who waits for a miracle in a world that no longer believes in them. I turn off the phone. The dark grows heavier. My mind replays every failure, every almost, every would-have-been. I see them all, lined up like spectacular witnesses to my demise: you are not worthy of love.
The silence speaks louder than words. I can hear it chanting, mocking, breathing. I roll over, burying my face in the pillow. It smells like detergent and sorrow. I close my eyes, but sleep won’t return. The house is too quiet. The ceiling too white. The walls too close. The heart too heavy.
I get up. My reflection in the mirror looks like someone else: older, lonelier and wearier. The man staring back has seen too many beginnings and too few endings. His eyes are deep wells filled with questions that have outlived their answers. “What a drag it is,” I murmur. The words fall flat, like a prayer that missed heaven.
I walk to the kitchen. The stove stares back, unlit, patient. I peel the potatoes slowly, mechanically. The knife glides against the skin, and I think of how easily life peels hope away. Each slice feels symbolic, small acts of survival masquerading as routine.
Oil hisses on the pan, and the smell of frying fills the room. For a moment, the silence breaks. For a moment, I exist. I stir the pork chops, watching them brown in the golden oil. My mind drifts. I imagine cooking for someone else. I imagine laughter in this kitchen. I imagine “we” instead of “I.”
But imagination is treacherous: it gives you heaven for a minute and drops you back into hell. The food is ready. I set the plate on the table. I look at the empty chair across me and feel the ghost of companionship. I whisper, “Bon appétit,” to the absence beside me. The first bite tastes of salt and melancholy.
The night has not ended. It has only begun.
The phone dimmed again, and silence folded over me like a heavy blanket. I sat still, the hum of the refrigerator and the pulse in my wrist composing a rhythm that refused to become music. I reached for the notebook and wrote what came uninvited:
I Am breath speaking, undivided word: return of self.
I Am tears in your eyes, pain in your heart, worry in your mind and joy twinned with anger.
I Am the smile of the world, kiss on your lips, thud in your love: never without.
I Am work in progress, polemic promise, fleeting utopia: if I ever was, there is no unending.
I Am the world you see, feelings you hold, emotions you are and an unseen reality touched in sensory.
I Am Me.
I read the lines aloud, my voice rough but certain. Each word burned quietly through the fatigue. It felt like God speaking my language to address my wores, not with explanations but with recognition. The words were not rescue; they were a reminder. Somewhere beneath despair, the I Am still whispered.
The clock showed 10:43. The food was cold. I sat back, pressing my palms to my knees. “I Am Me,” I repeated, softer each time, until it no longer sounded like defiance but acceptance. The phrase moved through me like slow light filling cracks in an old wall. The ache remained, but it was no longer master.
11:10 p.m. The night stretched its limbs. The wind knocked on the windowpane with a rhythm too deliberate to be accident. I stood and closed it, feeling the cold against my skin. The air smelled of rain not yet decided. My mind, restless, began its pilgrimage through memories again. I saw her name flicker in the dark like a forbidden prayer. I felt the echo of laughter that belonged to better days.
By 12:02 a.m., thoughts had grown heavier. Every tick of the clock felt like a verdict: another minute unloved, another heartbeat unpaid. I lay on the bed again, not expecting sleep. My body shifted between postures of fatigue and surrender. The ceiling became my confessional booth, its whiteness listening to my unspoken sins.
“I Am breath speaking,” I whispered. “Then why do I feel unheard?”
The question hung unanswered. Yet something stirred in the silence. Not comfort but presence. The kind of presence that doesn’t fix but stays. I turned on my side, facing the small lamp that dimmed and brightened as if breathing with me.
12:40. The power flickered. The house blinked. Darkness and light exchanged hands like two tired guards at a post. I could hear rain beginning its soft descent: first hesitant, then confident. The scent of wet earth filled the room, and with it came memory: my mother washing dishes in the rain, her hands moving like prayer. “God blesses twice,” she used to say, “when rain meets the ground and when hope meets the heart.”
I smiled despite myself. Hope meeting the heart felt distant tonight, yet her voice gave shape to the void.
1:17 a.m. The rain turned heavy, a percussion of mercy and melancholy. I walked to the window, opened it slightly, and let the air baptize me. Each droplet on my arm felt like punctuation in a sentence I had forgotten how to finish. “I Am Me,” I whispered again. The words felt true under the rain.
1:49 am. I wrote more lines without thinking: “Even silence has a pulse. Even pain has a curriculum.” My handwriting faltered as the ink ran, but I kept going. The night was no longer an enemy: it was a confession. Somewhere between page and pillow, I began to feel a strange gratitude. Not for the pain, but for the awareness it forced upon me. The knowledge that I still felt meant I had not turned to stone.
2:11 a.m. My head throbbed. Thoughts collided like drunks in an alley, memories of laughter, failure, worship and shame. I breathed slowly, counting backwards from fifty. The noise did not stop, but it softened, rearranging itself into something like rhythm. I turned off the light, letting darkness take its rightful place.
The rain became lullaby. My mind, exhausted from spinning, began to slow its machinery. I thought of her one last time: the curve of her smile, the ghosting that still bruised. Then I thought of God, and the bruise felt smaller. I whispered, “Chiedza: How come you don't shine like your name?” and closed my eyes.
3:03 a.m.
The body surrendered. Breath evened. The storm quieted. Sleep, long denied, came finally like a truce signed under candlelight.
And so it was that Mukoma Gwanz slept. The room exhaled with him, a slow peace folding over the weary air. His notebook lay open on the table, the last words trembling in half-light: I Am Me.
Dreams came, shards of memory and prophecy stitched together. He walked through fields of broken mirrors, each one showing a different version of himself. Some smiled, some wept, some prayed. In one reflection he saw a man whole again, laughing beside a faceless companion whose presence felt like home. The wind in the dream spoke without voice: Don't feel bad for being an unwanted good guy. He slept.
5:00 a.m. He woke up, went to the shower with daunting feelings.
- Writer
