MY MOTHER

MY MOTHER

By : Lisa Azelan

My mother is a lioness,

She is a fierce hunter,
A gentle nurturer,
A majestic creature.

I stood back in awe and admire,
All the bruises on her paws,
The tired look upon her face,
The scorching hot hunting days,
Out there in the wild cruel savannah.

Night has come and the hyenas have followed,
And I quivered with a swelling fear in my cave.

But my lionheart mother,
Whispered gently in my ear,

Lisa, dear
Fear is only a creature that lives in the dusty recesses of your head,
And a wise lion once said ….

That love and hate are beasts,
What grows is what you feed,
So feed love, feed love.

Feed love and give love,
Though people will serve you hate on a platter,
And there will be a time in this world,
Where values and morals
seem to no longer matter,

Be brave enough to jab that scary looking needle up your arm,
And vaccinate yourself against hate,
And claim your prize at heaven’s gate.

My mother is a seamstress,
She sits in a corner her fingers so nimble,
Fiddling on a timble,
A quilt lay before her – a tapestry of all the colours you could ever imagine.

And all my life, I’ve seen she mend,
Mend all the broken and loose seams that seem to fall apart,
She patches it back up and gives it a fresh new start.

I came crawling to her
one day,
Battered black and blue by the world,
Defeated and utterly, utterly devastated.

My heart
crushed – broken into itty bitty tiny
million pieces,
I closed my fists, and slowly in my hands, they reduce to dust

And they wound
my hands,
Dripping hot blood fell on the floor,
But the wounds of my heart was more painful,
Than the wounds of my flesh.

And my mother,
my beautiful mother,
She took those fragments gently from my hands,
And starts to mend and nurse it back whole again.

And she reminded me,
How this world is always gonna break your heart, honey.

You just have to forget how much it hurts and try again,

And again, and again,
and again,
Try hard and hit back
hard at life,
Until your knuckles bleed

And if you need to retreat
to lick your wounds in a corner, so retreat,
And if your heart needs to
be broken a million times,
so let it break,
But never stop mending it back up, for Allah’s sake.

My mother is a flower,
So graceful and lovely,

And I love how the light flickers and dances on her face,
How when she wakes up at dawn,
And drinks up the day,
Looks up at the vast daffodil bronze-kissed sky,
And say…

Be like the flower
my dear,
That gives its fragance even to the hand that crushes it,
Give, and it doesn’t matter if your hands, in return are bit.

Take little, and
give plenty,
For life is a coded
mystery,
The more you give, the more you gain,
It will all not be in vain.

Remember there is
enough in this world for everybody’s needs,
But not for everybody’s greed,
& greed, don’t fall into its evil trap,
Like many people before you, my sweet.

The only time you
should look into your neighbour’s bowl,
Is to make sure that they have enough,
And I know we don’t got much, but we got plenty,
If you only count your blessings and just open your eyes to see.

My mother is a woman,
When I was born,
She held me in her arms and look into my
doe-eyed eyes,
And knew she was a
woman in love.

She taught me that being a woman,
Means being something strong,
And that the media has got it all wrong,

All those films and
fairytales are all a mess,
Those feeble damsels in distress,
Locked up in towers oh-so-high,

And all they can do is cry and cry,
Waiting for their prince charming to slay the dragons,
And sweep them off their feet and go riding into the sunset,

Oh no, honey, these days,
you gotta do your
own saving,
And happiness, is not just equated to a wedding ring,
You gotta have education, you gotta have a mission,
And from the way I see it, this will always be a man’s world,
Under a woman’s supervision

My mother,
She could be a hundred million things,
Within the measure of a day,
Morphing slowly into all these different forms,
But her insistent love,
Was always there to stay.

And now I have grown older,
I look into my mother’s eyes and see the world that
turns inside them,
And try to comprehend the stream that has no language,
Coursing quietly beneath the quiet heaven of her eyes.

And have you seen her quivering hands?
The veins tracing down that scar-filled skin that understands,
Understands the years and life of this frail woman,
And the youth in her spirit that has never aged a day,

And I vowed to hold these hands,
For as long as I live,
For as long as I’m able to,
For as long as I’m here to stay,
To look into her eyes and carry her fragile body,
And love and care for her, just as she had done for me.

And one day when it’s time for her to go,
I’ll be pregnant with
feelings of despair and absence,
My biggest heartbreak yet.

But I’ll be a lioness,
A seamstress,
A flower,
A woman of strength and power,
And my mother lives on,
in me.

I love you, Mother.

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