DIGITS OF THE HEART

📘 Chapter 14: The Letter Beneath the Lining

The journey back to school was quiet. Harizon sat by the window of the matatu, watching the landscape blur into memory—acacia trees, roadside vendors, the occasional burst of laughter from passengers. In his backpack, tucked between his literature textbook and a half-finished short story, was Zawadi’s letter. He hadn’t read it again since that day under the mango tree, but he didn’t need to. The words had settled into him like rain into soil.

When he arrived at school, everything looked the same. The cracked pavement. The faded murals. The Form Four boys still shouting over football scores. But Harizon felt different. Not louder. Not bolder. Just more certain. Like something inside him had clicked into place.

Otieno noticed first.

“You’re walking like you’ve seen the future,” he teased.

Harizon grinned. “Maybe I have.”

Achieng raised an eyebrow. “Did Zawadi visit?”

“She did.”

“And?”

“She brought mangoes.”

Otieno laughed. “That’s love, bro.”

Harizon didn’t argue.

He returned to his routines, morning prep, afternoon debates, late-night writing sessions; but something had shifted. His poems grew sharper, his metaphors deeper. He wrote about mango trees and mothers who feared love. About girls who danced in rain and boys who didn’t know how to follow. His classmates began to notice. Even Mr. Muriithi asked to read one of his pieces aloud in class.

One evening, Harizon sat beneath the jacaranda tree, journal open, pen moving slowly. He wrote:

“She didn’t ask me to change.

She asked me to choose.

And I chose the ache.

Because it meant I was alive.”_

Clarion passed by, her steps measured. She glanced at him, then at the journal.

“You’re writing again,” she said.

“I never stopped.”

She nodded. “It shows.”

They didn’t speak more than that. But it was enough.

Later that night, Harizon reread Zawadi’s letter. The paper was soft now, worn at the edges. He traced her words with his thumb, then folded it carefully and placed it back in the journal.

He didn’t know what the future held. Exams. Expectations. Maybe heartbreak.

But he knew this: someone believed in his words.

And that was enough to keep writing.