Insight of a Kenyan Girl

Sometimes I think that should’ve been my name — Arrivederci.
A word that hums like a half-forgotten melody, soft and slow, meaning goodbye.
Not the loud, dramatic kind. The quiet one. The one that lingers long after I’ve left, the one that hangs in the air like perfume on an empty street.

My parents call me their miracle. Their pride. Their hardworking girl who always keeps it together.
They don’t see the exhaustion buried beneath the calm.
They don’t see the part of me that unravels quietly while everyone claps for the pieces that still look perfect.

I overwork. I always have.
It’s easier than thinking. Easier than feeling.
But when the noise fades and the day ends, I am left with a silence so loud it could break glass.

Friends?
What friends?

I can’t seem to keep them. Maybe I forget to try. Maybe I forget them altogether. People have this way of wanting something a piece of me, a reaction, a spark and I never know how to give it. I crave closeness, I do. But when it gets too real, too loud, too human, I pull away.

Crowded rooms suffocate me. Loud music makes my pulse race.
I hate pretending to belong in places where I feel like a ghost with good posture.
So I leave early. Every time.
And every time, no one notices I’m gone.

It’s funny my only real companions exist on paper.
Men built from ink and imagination. The morally grey kind.
The ones who love with violence, but feel with tenderness.
The ones who never reach out from the page and ask me to be real.
I love them easily. Too easily. Because they’re safe in their unreality.
They can’t walk away. And I can’t ruin them.

My memory doesn’t help. It betrays me.
I forget people names, faces, entire conversations like I’m wiping chalk from a board. Someone will smile and tell me a story about us, and I’ll nod, pretending I remember, when really, I don’t.
I burn bridges before they even have time to crack.
Sometimes out of anger. Sometimes out of nothing.
Just an ache that whispers, leave before they notice you fading.

When I see someone I used to know, I don’t say hello.
Sometimes it’s my eyesight. Other times, it’s mercy.
Because I’ve learned that revisiting old versions of myself never ends kindly.

It’s a strange kind of loneliness to crave love and fear it in the same breath.
To want to be seen but feel stripped bare under the gaze.
To love ghosts more than the living because they don’t demand you to stay.

Arrivederci.
It isn’t just a word I like.
It’s what I am.

The soft echo of leaving.
The quiet after the door closes.
The girl who never stays long enough to be remembered right.

Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been a pretty kind of absence.
A heartbeat fading into silence.
A goodbye wearing the shape of a girl.