When I'm Gone Poem by Ndimancho T Nyowikeh

When I am Gone,
When my name is finally writs in waters,
When it drifts upon the trembling surface of time
And no hand can gather it back again;

When my bones and joints are bargained
By the silent dealers of skull and dust,
When sinews surrender
And the body becomes a forgotten garment;

Tell Lance that I did my best.
Tell him the struggle was not to be great,
But simply to remain average,
To stand without collapsing
While storms made a festival of my roof.

Tell him those at the hem,
Those kneeling at shrines,
And those whispering in sorcery's corners
Did not help.

Or was it God's own wish
That I should enact the role of a failed player?
Was I cast before I understood the script?
Was the stage prepared for my stumbling?

Such rhetorics shall rest
Upon my coffin's pillow.
Questions shall lie beside me
Like unpaid debts.

But to you, the living;
You who will wake tomorrow
And stretch beneath another sunrise;
When you read this,
Transmit it to Lance.

Tell him also
That Bole did his best.
That he denied himself air
Just to place me upon a ladder
Whose top he never saw.

Tell him that in old age
He kept pushing against stone seasons,
That the light at the end of the tunnel
Was stolen before it reached our hands.

And in that same darkness
There was no kerosene
To light even a bush lamp.
No oil for hope.
No flame for inheritance.

Yet;
If on the contrary
I gain the many wishes buried at my head bed,
If heaven remembers my forgotten applications,
If mercy overturns the verdict;

Then do well
To show Lance his inheritance.
Tell him I was not merely a man who tried;
Tell him I was legendary.

______________________________
Ndimancho T Nyowikeh
16th February 2026
Up-Statiom Bamenda