Three years ago, I was rushing to make it on time for a poetry reading when I couldn’t find the book I planned to read from. 

If you know me, you would know that holding the words safely in my hands is merely a method to calm my nerves while on stage. I remembered my mother kept her copy in her light oak bookcase, alongside several different font-sized Qurans, volumes of encyclopaedias, childhood hockey medals, and my sister’s medical books that seem to follow us in every flat we move to despite her living abroad. 

I grabbed it off the shelf, stuck post-its on my selections and paused at this poem: When my daughter asks me who you were, I will tell her to hold her heart and look in the mirror. Nuriyah, looks over my shoulder and mouths the words loud enough for me to hear.

“Mum, it says daughter. Is this poem about me?” 

Realising this was the first time she asks me a question about this collection, I say “Yes, yes, it is”. I turn around to quiet sobs. Perplexed at her reaction, I pull her towards me, wanting to protect her from whatever she was feeling. “Hey,” I look for the brown hazel eyes under her small face, “are you okay?”  

The sobs grow louder; I hold her “what’s wrong? Are you feeling sad?” “I just, I just…” she stammers while gathering her words, “I’m just really sad I never got to know him.”

And then it hits me. This beautiful 8-year old, over the years, has asked me to share stories about her grandfather, to connect to someone who was not here anymore. Each story, she pinned in her sky, in the hopes of him enlightening her little world.  We nurture, educate and protect, yet it is easy to forget that our children are also stars, with emotions and ideas of their own.  Perhaps one day she will also be a constellation mapped and stretched in her children’s skies.

.

.

.

artwork by nikita | @itsjust._.nikita