Of Partings & Preludes – Momtaza Mehri

Give us the gift of an hourglass, the curve of its translucent neck.
The slow trickle of its promise.
Every ordinary wonder of every ordinary day.  
This will be our way of counting second chances.  
The measurements we need surround us,  
In the sun’s steady incline, a child chasing her own shadow, 
In the scattered fall of reddening leaves,  
The regularity of rattling trains and holiday decorations.  

Phone lines crackle. Connections flutter.  
Time spent alone can be an airless room.  
Togetherness is a language we relearn. These are odd days,  
Of stumbling over our words, our intentions, 
Of inventing new vocabularies of distant, digital bonds.  
A unity in separation.  
Veils of difference dissolve like borders 
Between bedrooms and conference rooms, Between kitchens and classrooms,  
Between neighbours and friends.  
Live like eager seedlings, giving ourselves up to the light 
Glittering ahead. The shifting of priorities.  
The choices we still have.  
Believe because we must.  

Give us the morning’s daily promise of reinvention.  
This knowledge that we can lick our wounds, try again.  
Grief may thicken, may be hard to swallow. Better to share it 
In familiar routines.  
Swear by the little things, tea-stained afternoons,  
Board games around busy tables, the inviting scent  
Of freshly baked bread.  
A shy fox nudging its wet snout against a row of violets,  
Collecting dewdrops on its pink tongue.  
All that is wild returns, resurfaces  
From the hush of devastation.  

We are lost in the losing, 
Only to find each other in sterile waiting rooms,  
The quiet of clinics and queues.  
Welcomed by a family of frontline defenders, 
We await a dawn we can once again claim.  
Its rays will spill across our faces. A touch to warm the skin,  
To make it sing.  

Listen to the poem here

Artistic Statement