October 24, 2025

by MTHUZI MKANDAWIRE

On Death

The older you get
the more dead people you know.

I read that somewhere,
or I think I read that somewhere,
I’m not quite sure.

It might have been something I picked up,
a conversation I was privy to but perhaps
wasn’t paying all that attention,

till someone let the phrase past their lips
and it latched onto me.
I like to picture it that way.

I know a few dead people,
not as many as most, and hopefully
it can stay that way for a while. 

A few years back I knew a boy,
easy-going and somewhat reckless,
who went from living to nonliving in an instant,
had the inside of his brain splattered
across black and white tarmac.

A year earlier his close friend perished,
a year before that, another friend.

I’d catch myself thinking about all three of them
at odd times: whenever I’d smile, in the middle
of my university lectures, or late at night as I brushed my teeth.

I’d wonder what scale had tipped heavily
and found them wanting, wonder when my own scale
would sway in the same inevitable direction.

The other day I got news
that my former boss took his life.
He once told me:

you guy, whenever you feel unable to do something,
treat that feeling as a sin, and don’t let it control you,

as I stood in his office,
fingers intertwined
behind my back.

A month later, he wouldn’t meet my eyes
when he informed me I was being fired,
would say nothing more when I stood up and left.

On the way out of the building,
all I would hear was his laughter,
soft and amused, and even now,
I still wonder if he was laughing at me.

The older you get
the more dead people you know.

I must have read that somewhere,
I know of no one, living or deceased,
who might have repeated those words to me.

I’m sure Lazarus was more than grateful
to be brought back and when he died
that second definitive time, whenever it happened,

I bet no one shed a tear,
not even his sisters.
I like to picture it that way.

*

Life As a Mystic

On my way to work, squeezed at the front of the bus, the bus conductor
arguing with someone over their change, you spoke to me. Your garb

of grey and blue Roman attire billowing slightly when you sat next to me,
that timeless and penetrating gaze on your face. For the love of money,

you whispered, a wink and no words further. Hurrying down the streets
of Lusaka CBD, a man ahead of me, cellphone pressed to his ear,

the words that came out of his mouth,
muli kuti ba Mkandawire?

Here, always here,
you answered for me. I turned and caught you cross-legged

in full lotus position by the side of Freedom Way, head shaved with
round plump cheeks. You bowed and nodded as I carried on.

Standing in the office kitchen, the both of you around to keep me company,
I asked on the meaning of life, and what it’s really all about. You glanced at each

other, and then turned to look at me, but before either of you could speak,
my coworkers walked in for lunch and the question quietly slipped my mind.   

*

Wednesday Morning

I am not a fan of the morning,
I never have been.
Sometimes though, I marvel at how

light works its way across my window
through inches of glass and threads of heavy curtain
just to find the curved inner muscles of my sleepy eyes.

Eyes that will observe the early morning bleakness recede,
will watch as objects reveal themselves
second by second, sleepy blink after sleepy blink.

In my freshman year, I would wake up at five
in the morning of every weekday,
would stand naked under a leaky faucet,
whichever I could find working,
as cold droplets of water ran over my body.

And each morning for close to a year
I would hear the Adventists on the balcony
above my room having their morning devotions,
would catch scriptures on the Light of the World.

All of us, the Adventists and myself,
whether we were aware of it or not,
wrapping our first daily routine
around the presence of brightness.

It takes eight minutes and twenty seconds
for photons to shoot off the boiling surface of the Sun,
travel through the vastness of space and finally reach our eyes.
So, we only ever see the Sun eight minutes in the past.

Somewhere far out there
in the emptiness and coldness of space,
there is a supernova long dead, its final rays of light
travelling billions of kilometres, still yet to get here.

But I am not that patient
and I am not a fan of the morning.
So I will turn to the other side of this bed,
raise my blanket a little bit higher and close my eyes.