Kampala

As read at the fantastic East Meets West slam poetry open mic. Inspired by the journey of a Ugandan student studying Electrical Engineering at MIT.

Kampala
Kampala

Baby powder lines the inside of her translucent latex gloves
As she slips them over her bare hands

Kampala
Kampala

Dry white particles burrow deep into her skin like dust
Kicked up in a game of tag on a worn school playground

Kampala
Kampala

“Naeeta”! she shouts
She stops.

Eyes popped open
A primed pair of lungs
The steel cabinet opposite her unable to absorb the brunt of her war cry
It shutters
And as it sheds the energy from its shelves
Down its legs
And finally into the floor.
It calms
And so does she

She slinks back to her lab bench
Her lungs tight from the arid recycled air in the laser testing lab
Eyes strained like a waterlogged grapefruit bobbing brightly in a lazy creek
She hones in on amplitudes and diodes and ignores the sweet memory of a breeze
Brushing by her legs as she walked through her garden
In Kampala

And so she is
And will be for the time to come
In a different place

Where moisture comes not from dark, rich earth
But from the tip of a steel showerhead after a long day in the lab
Where her head cools not from pulses of fresh air from the Rwenzori mountains
But from a dorm-issued pillow that adorns her twin bed

And as she slips under her sheets and rests her tired eyes
And as her skin begins to soften and her feet find the edge of her bed
She hears the light springs in her mattress shift under her weight
And in her mind she finds
Kampala