Another Blog.

spring orchards

And He gifted us

this

recalibration,

a chance to reach

the highest of stations.

Nights will descend with

vials of gold.

Qiyam Al Layl,

does not know

freedom

Wife and children

Lights that

flicker

then

dim.

Father’s voice,

a distant wind.

Mother’s warmth,

a dying ember.

But this man’s slender hands know

how to tend to an inmate

thrown into his cell

after interrogation,

body battered

in the chasm between nations.

And this man knows

that to feed

a fly in the keyhole,

a grain of his rice,

is resistance in

an empathy depleted place.

And this man knows,

on the night that he dreams

of the last messenger

feeding him sweets

and his father in sujood,

harsh at times, like a wind

that would whip you into shape,

frustratingly resolute when she had made her mind up; like the din caused by a pan hitting the floor.

Her grey eyes could hold storms and crashing waves. But her anger stemmed from an instinct to protect; a lioness fighting off the hyenas of the world. Really she was soft.

then do not take the sky with you.

Do not shake the stars

loose on your way out

if you must leave

then pause on the step

and reverse from your haste

and sit back on that sofa,

and learn

and

breathe

and repent from your mistakes.

If you must leave

is threadbare where knees lean

into heaven,

hear these prayers rise there,

their melancholy

acknowledged.

Hear

These

Prayers

rise there.

On earth they sit in mud, on earth they swallow flames

Allah elevates his beings,

from the darkness

to know you

cannot

stopper

its ache.

sweet vials

leave

a dark one

but there are

small openings,

like a cat against a

rain-specked window

as the night unveils

whose hearts do not feel

under the weight of my personal grief.

On others i ask myself how I could be so ungrateful for being mildly scalded

by the bitterness of the trials you faced in this world,

Perhaps that one thing will never cease to ache

until your last breath

in a little cottage

spotted from afar

on a dark night.

Mother’s hands

were shields from father’s

storms.

Mother’s lap

a sanctuary

her bangles playthings.

And peace was her heartbeat

in my ear

my eyes were protected

through the lens of her chadar.

Mother was a girl

with a mother who plaited her hair,

and fed her

and gave her dolls

to play with in the garden of their back to back.

She ran carefree down the alleys,

a safer time.

Mother had dreams,

that seemed to drift with the wind

like a dandelion

extinguished with one blow.

You see

Mother lost her mother at 6 years old.

mothered younger siblings

and tried to bridge what

in a thousand prostrations

with His names upon their lips.

Found grounding in the moments

when the journey seemed adrift.

Their prayer mats were threadbare

their hearts were full of bliss.

The night holds many stars my love

the only hand in the dark,

but the little black cat she fed the odd morsel to

sits expectantly in her porch

you leave some stars

in the sky before you go

so that their light

might fill my

aching soul.