LETTER | On a road not meant for grief,
Beneath the weight of sky and smoke,
She stood -
A mountain made of mourning,
Her heart still tethered
To the breath that would not return.

She nudged him once,
Then twice -
As if her touch
Could stitch time back
Into his broken frame.

The great truck,
Cold and unyielding,
Sat like a monument
To man’s blind passing.

She pressed against it -
Grief made muscle,
Love made protest,
A mother unwilling
To surrender her child to silence.

And it was Mother’s Day.
The jungles did not know,
But she did.

For her, there were no flowers,
No songs,
Only the stillness of a calf
Who would never again
Follow her shadow
Through the trees.

Onlookers wept,
But she did not.
Her sorrow spoke
In the slow sweep of her trunk,
In the trembling earth
Beneath her quiet vigil.

How many more
Must fall beneath our roads,
Our haste,
Our hunger?

How long before
We see that their lives
Are stitched into ours -
Leaf to root,
Breath to breath?

In Gerik,
A mother taught us
What we forgot:
That love does not move on.
It stays.

And sometimes,
It stands in the middle of the road,
Refusing to let go.

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