EKENANDA

 EKENANDA by  Nyabuti Peter Semba

My neighbour owns an ekenanda .

Not the polite kind.

The old sort—

wooden belly, tired needle,

a hunger for hours

most people reserve for sleep.

It wakes before dawn remembers itself,

after night has folded its excuses.

Always when I am home.

Always when silence feels earned.

The sound is not loud.

That is the trouble.

It is close.

It slips through walls,

settles where rest should be,

presses gently,

persistently.

I do not own one.

That, too, is part of the noise.

It is easier to forgive rhythm

when your hands know

where to begin.

Easier to accommodate

what you can answer.

The ekenanda does not play songs.

It leans into them.

Repeats what aches.

Each note rises, loosens, returns—

as if something broken

has learned a careful way

to breathe.

There is a moment—

thin as a held breath—

when mourning tilts,

when the sound almost smiles,

and I have to turn my face

into the pillow

as if that might save me

from knowing too much.

Sometimes it sounds like grief.

Sometimes like relief.

Most times, like both

refusing separation.

I lie awake,

counting the pauses between sounds,

resenting the certainty

with which the instrument

knows its own need.

How unashamedly

it answers itself.

There is something unsettling

about pain that finds pleasure,

about a body—

wooden or otherwise—

that trembles through the night

and survives

by being heard.

By morning, the ekenanda is still.

The needle lifted.

The room quiet.

I rise carrying a silence

that has never learned to sing,

listening to my own breathing,

thin, obedient, untouched—

wondering when discomfort

became envy,

and why some sounds

feel like an accusation

when you have never learned

how to make them.