Song

My mother sits in the renovated room
you didn’t live long enough to see –
your room: the one you two shared for
twenty-three years –
and she smiles at me.
It has been over a year.
Things are different and
things have changed, and I,

I want to ask her:
Is everything that happened in your absence
even real? What good is any existence without
you? Why are we all still here?
Why haven’t we just disappeared –
gone to wherever you exist still?
So many questions;

But I digress.
She’s smiling at me and I’m trying to hurt less,
she birthed me so she knows what I look like
when my heart’s a mess,
And she lost the love of her life when you left,

so this isn’t just about me.

I know my job now is to make her life easy,
to smile at her whenever she looks at me,
to lie to her and tell her we’re all done grieving –

This is what you would have asked of me
if you were still here. But you’re not,
so I have to recreate you from memory,
tell her things that will put her beautiful heart at ease,
look her in the eyes without crying because
that’s what she needs of me,
and I’m still your brave little girl so when she looks at me,
I’m unshaken.
Over it.
Strong.

Like you were.

And I’m praying she doesn’t mention your name.
I hope to god she doesn’t revive a memory.
I keep her busy so she can’t see the extent of my misery –
and she’s not talking about you yet,
so we joke and we laugh forgetfully.

The art of avoidance is simple.

So when she plays some music,
I welcome the distraction.
I listen intently.

But then comes the inevitable moment
her voice starts to shake,
and we are no longer mother and daughter;
only sisters in heartbreak,
and here we are
no longer putting up a façade for one other,

she says she sings this to you
every night before she sleeps,
but you never listen to her,
you never come back
and she is still begging:
ارجع كما انت … صحواً كنت او مطرا

but you remain gone.