They always told us our bodies were temples/

but never taught us how to read the Scriptures

          /mother teach me of pain

of sorrow/  that carves these bodies into boats/

mother teach me of a home that will welcome me/

              teach me of sacrifice       how to wrap this body in its own wound

For verily this soul belongs in a world where everything has been taken in and stolen

Teach me of tears that reveal only the golden parts of our souls

of the beautiful, of the ugly and the unseen

of the parts we took away

They only speak of themselves in third person as if the distance to pain as if to gift with another name

We only address our nightmares in our dreams so that if we were to get scared we could imagine another world

but this is reality

mother teach me to unlearned hate I've known for so long

the voices that murmur only The beautiful things

Sabr and patience are like knives

Carving hollow homes for women who are tired

Woman who birth civil wars  

Who have Pored sadness into the bones of their children and hoped They would make a body of hope

who have seen children buried and born again

This is prayer

For humble bones fold like paper under the weight of this world

       Like Proverbs that my grandmother spoke     /Ayayoo teach me how to carry this world on one shoulder and God on the other

for the humble abode only bores the grandchildren of sadness

    // fold in the Lords hands and you will find salvation in the smallest of forms

In this land of ashes and iron you find hope buried under the rocks where grandfather's feet kiss the ground  

and in the streaks of sunlight that bear our brown skin holy

there is no poetry in pain

no beauty to be found were rubber and flesh meet gods eye

This is salvation

wrapped in each duaa are the words that I speak

  /oh you children of many wars

do not become deaf to the one that beats inside you

 

 

 

*Sabr- perseverance and persistence

*Ayayoo- Grandmother