She Soils In Night's Lament

The night breathed a supple sigh, inhaling and exhaling with tremors of the wind. A cold chill crept among the lands, clasping its hand over life. The parched ground cried with thirst, and cracked under walking feet. Despite the cold, a woman sat alone under a tree, barely clothed, except a little cloth draped over her body. She held a sleeping child in her hands, clutching her neck in hazy embrace.

Her village was set upon the outskirts of a small, dried river in Ethiopia. It was merely a grouping of tiny tents, wrought with branches and mismatched clothes. Life was struggle – this was something each man and woman here had realized, but furthermore, for them it was existence. Ambitions, dreams, luxury: these were such foreign feelings.

She whispered softly, the moon shining on her black skin. She was not beautiful, or perhaps years of hardness had swept the common, feminine sweetness from her face.

“Ah, child of morning lush,
lie dreaming now, in sweetened hush,
with moon’s shine upon your face,
thy lips smile in open embrace.”

She smiled within the rhyme, a bitter-sweet infliction of seeing her child – knowing she loves him, and knowing he too will face the same hardships. Such is life, a four-day clock, two days for hope and two for wait.

Even she knows that the glass may be half-full or half-empty; it still has to be drunk.