June 5th, 2021, our world changed forever. In the beginning, we grasped whatever we could to survive. Words like cancer became etched in our minds forever. Escaping from the science of implementing, I found the science everywhere. The questions too, of how come, why, when, became our only way. You became the question we never knew we could ask. That women die every day from something with proven intervention. Our own Angie, died in a painful way. One week after my dad’s birthday. Another volt that grapples our mind. Why do people we love, die. Yet, if people we love die, if we can push it all aside, then living has to mean more, even if we find ourselves lodging in new places and with me faces. Those who have everything given to them, those who speak too as if they started the journey, forget how the story began. It’s at this moment, that change must come.

Words by themselves are never enough even if the microphone is in the hands of few. We created it only for cities built on hills, working with first lights to spaces, destined for greatness. See while they hide, and deny, they only end up deceiving and destroying themselves. Only thing left is to pass the microphone…The plot and the characters for this next chapter was never meant for those with narrow dreams, those exhausted, those that lack imagination, and those at the end of their own road with all their dreams achieved. According to the epic poem by Ben Okri, ‘there is no exhaustion where there is much to be hoped for, to work towards, where dreams remain unrealized.’ Ben Okri would also say, ‘when you can no longer dream, no longer see possibilities, no longer see alternatives, when you see only limitation, despair and negation, then you are in the way. You are also the problem. The exhausted obstruct, the creation of a greater future. They should therefore clear the stage for new dreamers.’ For new warriors of light too, those focused on justice and healing, storytelling and creativity, so that Angie’s death would not be in vain.

For life for me has never been castles in air. I know what it is like to rest in fields of green pastures and walk at the same time through the deepest valley. The woman we became, with feet anchored firmly to the ground, with no fear, only wanting revolution, really wanting evolution, charged by life, by death, the possible ranges of grief and living, and all the changes it propels is the infinity storytelling we have been waiting to tell. Truth it, you were never meant to tell it with others. Never meant to share it too with anyone. Few will share the vision. Few will believe it in to.

But then there is you. Defiant in your ways without excuses, the tools of the incompetent. You know how they seldom succeed. If you have brought people and things close, the next phase requires arm’s length. No need to question why they rally against your strength, no need to see how they see it too. The narrow, rough roads you must and will climb, even in silence or poetry, for Angie and for others who dare dream, requires that you remember from where your strength comes from, even when things end, even when time and things, turn on you like a violent storm. It’s deep end of the valley, keep walking through.

These days I find myself writing words that pierce the coming days with dreams. If I’m writing here often, then I am taking a break from the bigger things being manifested. While they waste their time with the same stories or indulge my space for my minds stories, know that we have moved on past the deep end of the valley, though darkness is still all we see. The next moments are only for those truly at the table. From where does our strength come from they may wonder: from Angie, from legions, from God, from a life only committed to infinity storytelling my way.

Even now with precious memories that sink forever in our soul. Even as the weight of sadness still remains our world, our torch, our life. Our forces are fully focused, pointing to choices, leading away from the familiar. When I speak of change, I don’t mean only seasons. I mean knowing my story, and they ways I’ll tell it to infinity, not in other to complain or force anyone to listen, but as a powerful and eloquent reminder to keep what matters most, and Isioma I write these words, in their fullness, powerfully, to remind you, to keep you.