Love Sits by My Father

My parents love each other like a secret.

They follow each other into rooms 

making excuses for how they got there.

 

Every time my mother falls asleep on the couch,

my father meets pillow to living room tiles

and calls it a backache.

 

The first time I found love in our house,

it was disguised as loyalty.

The first time I understood love to have been there long before I arrived,

 

it came as an apology,

it came in an envelope I found in my mother’s purse

decades old.

 

It read:

لكي العذر حتى ترضي [To you, my apologies until you are satisfied].

How long she must have waited for regret to cross an ocean.

 

My aunt once told me that my parents have divorced twice. 

My mother neither denies nor confirms this;

instead, she sits by my father,

 

first in the big house with the high ceilings and the gypsum corners, 

then in the one bedroom with the dirty kitchen and white lights.

She sits by my father some more,

 

first covered in gold,

then thankful to have once held it.

She sits by my father

 

and teaches me that love can be doubtful,

and love can be scared, 

and when love is worried, love may falter.

 

And love may lose everything,

but love sits by my father,

and love stays there.

Qutouf Elobaid, New Generation of African Poets (Akashic Books, 2020)