The Light of a Name

‘The Light of a Name’

Every morning

a mother wakes,

but not from night;

from that same final moment

still

lodged like a shard of mirror

in her throat.

At night

her daughter comes;

with that same bright face,

with that same last smile,

with a hand that seems

still in the air

not to have finished its farewell.

The mother

opens her eyes,

and the room

becomes a well

without a rope,

without a sound,

without a dawn.

She tells herself:

if only

there were no more mornings,

if only these eyelids

never returned

to any window.

But suddenly

a name rises from the alley;

not a name,

a lamp

on the wind’s shoulder.

A neighbour

holds her daughter’s photograph

like a little sun

in their hands.

A child

reads her name

on a wall.

An old woman

murmurs:

she is still here.

And the mother

sees

that her daughter

is no longer only in a picture frame;

she is in the doors,

in the walls,

in the streets

that, with every step people take,

breathe.

Her name

has passed through stone,

risen from the earth,

settled in eyes,

and in the people’s voices

become bread,

become light,

become a vow.

Then

something quietly

catches fire in the mother’s breast;

not a fire that burns,

a light

illuminating the wound

from within.

The people

say nothing,

but their gaze says:

we will not forget.

For ever,

until freedom,

until the day when morning

with the banner of the sun

rises

from behind this night.

And the mother,

for the first time,

understands

that her daughter’s death

was not the end;

her daughter

continues in names,

walks in memories,

on the city’s walls

blossoms,

and in the hearts of people

who still stand firm

is alive.

Then

she breathes more easily,

places her hand over her heart,

and through her tears

looks towards dawn.

As though her daughter,

from beyond the light,

with that same last smile,

softly says:

Mother,

weep,

but do not fall apart;

morning is near.

The sun

will find the way home

through

my name.