My gaze baked with the porcelain of hope.
My living has this thing that shreds meaning, one thing that grows like US lifers.
While we'd sit to pray; my mother always had us curl around the end of her
hijab, like beads formed on a rosary. Us, of five, forming a sacred circle, seeking
blessings, either to live or be lived.
This story has it that one bleeds not as an option once she thinks of grief.
And here, I talk of grief.
Every Thursday in this room have talked about something & for the passed lives.
We'd recite Suratul-Mulk to beseech for those that knew to live, passing on as
to be dead. Sometimes, laughter pours out in sweet regard to gestures & oftentimes,
we become drunken to our own quest for water from the thirst on earth.
Air escaping through the eyes, as they stagger through the space of nothingness.
They barely make out sounds that lead out words; all that means we have to see.
Mother & God, the only feet I ever stumble upon, seeking refuge—I remember
one night, she only had Ameen to say, staring at space. In her head, pleading to
God to foster for her, her burden.
Her eyes, a torch awoken along nights, also the skylights in mornings. Her eyes, a
witness to silhouettes of cold bodies, staked down the heart of the earth. Today, her
eyes turned home to warm water foaming out boiled tears. The young face with
wrinkles now brim tears to be worried about. Her canines turned fangs like an
alpha so acquainted to the feeble world. So much upon a woman stranded of love.
How long is this pest a venom that makes a mother turn so grown with grief?
How true is a wife's yearning, a salt that stings too harsh at peace?
How far has the faces & palms & fingers of guidance I touched, fading then void,
gone in seconds? How often have I seen death stalk livelihoods more than I have, birth.
But oftentimes, my mind takes on an odyssey outside its choking casket, off a strange
railing where I know of nothing, even of myself. The pricy dream that the well would
bend for me to take water from it, if one day, I become stranded of pail. While I do not
weigh worthy of what I've made of myself, rather, of what was made of me—
Right here, atop the breath of life; I have myself akin to roses, devoid of its thorns.
So does she.
Ahmad Imam Aishah is a Nigerian writer and a second year student of Linguistics at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. She was the second runner up of the University of Ilorin SU writers' competition (Poetry Category). She is a budding poet.