Essy The Poet

Sr. Esther Jeruto Koros, osf You don’t know love; I was telling you. Love is the warmth in your guts That makes you act irrationally. Love is the strength in your mind The resilience through a dark night.  Love is the morning song That escapes from your lips Untamed, unpretentious yet perfect. Love is the candle in your eyes That lights the others Drawing a little joyful tear. Love is the outstretched arm Whose embrace kills the pain. Love is the unsettling desire That holds its breath Until it is told, ‘it went well.’ Love is the rare phone call That seeks genuine responses. Love is the tainted window Whose unclear shape boils into a mystery. Love is the bold graffiti shouting Letting the soul out in the streets. Love is the little baby girl Who falls asleep in your arms. Love is a mother’s candid voice Saying, ‘he is not the right man for you.’ Love is the bird at your window Acting free at spring. Love is the understanding without words That says, ‘I know.’ At the summit of love...

There is a kind of heroism in suffering,                     Medals are offered in some unknown place, Rewarding the longest list of ordeals. There seems to be a voice saying: ‘I am a big deal because I have endured so much.’ So nobody suffers in silence unless of course the suffering is a shameful one.   Malik, was slow to seek a hearing She, barely a teenager, a labourer at a city estate Waited for when her aunt Boss, Whose treatment towards her was gross, Had gone to work in her sleek Mercedes. She just needed someone to listen to her for a minute.     The maid next door all self-absorbed on the borrowed mirror, Was quick at her dismissal telling her: ‘Malik, we are all in this city to make a living, My cousin died, my mama got cancer, my aunt Boss hates my manners, And her husband keeps winking at me. Have I died?’ And the suffering Olympics unfolded.   The man man...