A Dream With My Mother

Last night, she came again,

Not as a memory, but as presence.

Her hands, soft and warm,

I'd forgotten how her touch felt,

Held a bowl before me

And fed me something

that tasted like love.

I tried to ask, how and why,

her absence,

But the question drowned

In the calm of her eyes,

That said: nothing really dies,

only changes its address.

Then I woke and realised it was a dream,

Like a child, I was still hungry,

For the hands that fed

but will never return.

Still, I feel her in the air,

In the space between my breaths

where my love waits,

never gone,

never fully present.

Her hands that fed me once,

now feeds my strength from within.

-- A Dream Of

Sanji-Paul Arvind