Mayok Media

Category: Angels along the Way

  • My Ethiopian Brother

    (For Abera)

    He came quietly,

    not like thunder

    but like spring rain.

    One moment we were strangers

    at the African Student Association meeting,

    the next—

    he was on the floor

    building towers of blocks

    with my children,

    laughing like he’d known them forever.

    He never asked if I needed help.

    He simply showed up.

    When the injury struck,

    and word spread like wind through our small community,

    Abera was there.

    Trash bins emptied.

    Toys sorted into corners.

    Tiny socks folded by a pair of hands

    too young to carry the weight he chose to lift.

    He swept not just my floors,

    but the sorrow gathering in my heart.

    He played with the children

    like they were sacred,

    never an inconvenience.

    He called me Big Sister,

    and I trusted him with the title.

    Because he earned it.

    On the day I delivered,

    he became the village.

    Took the children to school,

    dressed them in joy for picture day,

    brought them to the hospital

    to meet their baby brother

    as if ushering in royalty.

    Even after healing,

    he stayed—

    a constant presence

    until graduation carried him

    back to Ethiopia.

    Now, he’s a doctor—

    a healer in name

    as he always was in spirit.

    And though an ocean stretches between us,

    I tell his story like scripture

    to every Ethiopian student I meet.

    I say,

    “There was once a young man named Abera,

    whose kindness held my house together

    when I could not.”

    And they smile,

    because they recognize his name—

    and somehow,

    his spirit, too.

  • She Left Me Light

    (For Christina Lux)

    Some friendships begin

    in language—

    ours did.

    French syllables,

    colonial histories,

    shared passions for voices

    that had survived the fracture of empire.

    She met me

    not just as a colleague,

    but as a guide.

    A quiet cartographer

    mapping the places where my mind

    had not yet dared to go.

    When I struggled,

    she suggested.

    When I doubted,

    she encouraged.

    She handed me books

    like offerings—

    as if to say,

    “Here. I believe in your mind.”

    But Christina wasn’t just intellect.

    She was presence.

    When my body broke under the weight of pain,

    when my children scattered toys and time

    all over the floor of my life,

    she came.

    And helped sweep it all

    into a rhythm again.

    She never said: Let me know if you need anything.

    She simply showed up.

    And later—

    when my dreams widened into job applications,

    she sharpened my sentences,

    dusted off my hope,

    and reminded me that I had every right

    to take up space.

    Now,

    she is a poet—

    in name, in print, in essence.

    She builds lines like bridges

    and lifts others as she climbs.

    When she moved,

    we packed her memories together—

    me, my children, her son—

    tangled in cardboard boxes

    and the sweetness of change.

    She gave me books.

    Stacks of them.

    Their spines now lean against mine

    on my shelves,

    whispering her name

    every time I reach for one.

    And now,

    as I return to my own writing,

    I do it with the echoes of her care.

    Christina,

    you didn’t just help me

    write a dissertation—

    you helped me write a life

    I am proud of.

    You left me words.

    You left me wisdom.

    You left me light.

    • Mary Mba (Ph.D.)