Dormant Volcano

Earth Exterior, Fire Within

July eleventh, twenty-twenty-five.
Summited Kili… barely alive.
Top of the world, but the vibe was grit,
seven straight days, feeling like shit.

A convulsive choice so impulsive.
But I had to reach that summit—
Alchemising pain through this prison,
I didn’t know the vision,
But my body knew the rhythm;
I needed that collision to heal my self-perception.

Lungs burning, legs shaking, lips blue-in frost.
Thousands spent, asthma attacks—
why this cost?
For Uhuru. For freedom.
Because in that brief moment,
I stood on the roof of Africa.

I felt it. I held it.
A vision of me I’d only met in cloud-9 trips.
Asthmatic beat, in size 3 feet
planted on icy boulders,
At four foot nine,
I’m soaring on my own shoulders.
Weight stripped by altitude and nights,
Tears streaming, cells screaming—
this underdog won the fight.

Spent a lifetime underestimated,
felt degraded and isolated.
Once self-doubt clouds perception, it dismantles the soul,
Especially when your youth was fed to snakes in a hole.
That shit I battled was harder than Kili.
So I shed all the crap and stepped out the trap
One step at a time until
my soul cracked open,
To the vastness above.

I became a skinny skeleton to build the beast I’ve always been.

And once I caught that,
I swore I’d never let it go.
I’m a mirror to that dormant volcano,
An Earth exterior, but fire within.

---

January first twenty-twenty-six.
Fell into a hole and got benched.
God knows if I’ll climb again,
my whole world got drenched.
That thought breaks me.
Himalayas was supposed to be next

Don’t worry - my mum doesn’t worry,
I passed her test.
I carry her grit like a crest on my chest.
But that fall, I did not choose
It shattered her too
and that’s a pain we don’t get to lose.
I climb mountains - I NEVER go down caves.

Athlete to my ADHD,
is what an ocean is to waves. Movement is my wiring,
my oxygen, my only save.
Being bed-ridden hurt more than a ruptured organ.
But my niece and I watched Pocahontas-
Listen with your heart you will understand.
I'm not stranded.
The truth just landed -

I’m not Kaj only when I dance. I dance because I am Kaj.

I’m not this machine, I’m the spirit moving through the unseen.

After Kili, my heart said:
Look what I can do.

Post-NDE, it whispers:
Look who you are. Look at your own view.

An unbreakable human spirit inside a fragile frame, Broken (temporarily).

Unstoppable all the same.