Nabila ... By Jafar Alam ...

A poem for my aunt.

I write,because the page is empty.

She is greater than these words .

Her eyes

misty and wet,

Tell a story ...

She tells me the words in her heart.

Dark clouds follow her.

Her life is a gloom.

She refuses to let go of the wheel.

In living

there is hope.

Within this woman

lives a child

that calls me on days

where we talk for hours

about nothing.

We eat waffles

and tease each other.

In those moments,

we forget the world.

Only to come back to a reality

too hard to swallow at times.

She is a believer.

We have a bond

that is inexplainable.

Her face is luminous

giving light to darkness.

She gives colour to a world full of black and white.

A face,

salted by the sea of tears

shed,

everytime she saw the nature of the world.

Her eyes are like

violet stones.

She has four lives

she won't desert a single one.

A deserter will always be deserted.

Fear is taught.

Love is natural.

I asked her:

"What do you want your four lives to be?"

She said:"I want them to be alive"

O my heart,

in this darkness we are a prayer

that when she reads what this hand writes,

writes out of love for her.

She is strength.

She is patience.

She is love.

She is a mother.

She is not alone.

She ...

is reserved for Heaven. (c)