The Ten Touches
The touches that make a life, the touches that remind us about being human.
The first touch was her skin against mine. My mother’s arms holding me close, the weight of me pressed to her chest. Her heartbeat was steady against my ear - teaching me the rhythm of safety before I knew words. That touch kept me alive.
The second touch dared me to be a kid, dared me to be brave, to step on stones and thorns. The falls and carelessness of childhood left marks and scars on my body as I interacted with my environment without fear. That touch taught me I was part of the land, and the land would always leave its mark on me.
The third touch was when a teacher told me I would not amount to anything. Mwalimu wa maths, hapa ni wapi? It’s a touch that etched into my brain longer than it needed to. I cannot even remember that teacher's face. That touch told me not everyone will believe in me, nor see my potential.
The fourth touch led to many more touches. I don’t remember the circumstances of the first one, but I remember how it felt. The softness of lips, the warmth of bodies close together. That touch wrote poems on my skin. It told me intimacy is a language no book can teach.
The sixth touch was the rough handle of a jembe blistering my palms. Hot oil leaping from a sufuria, leaving scars that never quite healed. Pens pressed too hard into fingers aching with stories and emotions to express. Yet even in their roughness, these hands could still cradle, still soothe. This touch reminded me of what we do for survival in this capitalistic world.
The seventh touch was cold. Relatives gripping me tight as soil thudded against wood six feet below, tears wetting the dry ground. An empty bed where warmth used to be. That touch carved silence into my bones, reminding me that love’s shadow is loss, and every embrace is borrowed time.
The eighth touch is a stranger's handshake across borders of my own story, greetings that lingered longer than words and turned into stories. That touch opened me up, taught me that humanity is stitched together by contact, and that to touch another is to cross into their story.
The ninth touch is slower. A grandchild’s fingers wrapping around mine, tugging me into the present. The warmth of tea held between my palms on a cold morning, rough pages of a book beneath my fingertips. These touches remind me that I am still here, that life still asks to be felt.
And when the last touch comes, I pray it is familiar. A hand I love resting in mine, steadying me as I let go. That final touch will remind me that I was held, I was seen, I was known.
Because every touch - first or last, tender or cruel - has left its mark, will leave its mark. My skin, my soul, my heart will remember what my memory might forget.
Touch has taught me this: to live is to leave marks, and to carry marks. And when I am gone, I hope the marks I leave will say one thing clearly: I was human. I was here.