Mothers Who Stand

‘Mothers Who Stand’

No longer

is a mother

only the image of a woman broken,

only a faltering voice

among the cold walls of grief.

She

stands,

with shoulders that

for years have carried loss

and still

have not collapsed.

In her eyes

there is no surrender,

but a quiet fire burning,

a fire that

does not shout

but does not go out either.

She takes the child’s hand,

not to flee,

but to show the way.

As though

all the suffering of these years,

thread by thread,

she has woven

into the scarf of her patience,

into the creases of her hands,

into a silence that

speaks louder than a thousand slogans.

She

has not left

only tears as death’s inheritance;

she has kept the names,

the memories,

justice,

and that unwritten pledge

that blood

in the earth

will not be lost.

The child

beside her

is more than one home’s child,

the continuation of a memory,

the continuation of a road

that from a mother’s shoulders

reaches tomorrow.

This mother

has not bowed

for the world

to condemn her to silent mourning;

she has grown taller

so that history

will hear her footsteps.

And so it is

that the mother

in this image

is not the end of sorrow

but the beginning of standing firm,

a pillar of love and pain,

who takes the inheritance of suffering

and into a seed of hope

transforms it.