“an ode to my parents” by Fatma Latif
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “an ode to my parents” by Fatma Latif.
an ode to my parents
By Fatma Latif
these longer nights are spent in the company of old picture frames. traveling down each road of
reflection, warmed with the welcoming scents of my mother’s favorite: sandalwood.
i can still remember. the lime and lemon garden in the backyard, where i spent the better halves of my
childhood summers, splashing waters everywhere, hiding from the sun in an inflatable pool.
humming the longings of ray charles, here i am. revisited with memories of my father through a favorite
of his. and i can still remember, the playful and silly dances he reserved only for my laughters.
rediscovering my parents through the hopeful smiles of younger love, through the histories weaved to
make a home to home us. through my mother’s rare and precious reveals, tracing her heart’s teenaged
tales.
in the face of a violent erasure, in an unforgiving, unmistakably prejudiced world, i have been trying to
hold onto my memories of home. but it’s the proud journeys i think of. the lines of ancestry that shaped
my parents, and all the parts of me mirroring the parts of them, mirroring parts of these communities.
there is a certain remedy in old family photographs. a reminder on the days where i feel more like a lost
branch battling winds of indifference.
i am stronger, and more resilient than this current.
i have richer worlds of heritage, bigger worlds of beauty, love and kindness behind me.
i am my mother’s childlike hope, balanced tenderly with my father’s realism.
i have deeper roots that will always call after me.
never will i allow this world to silence them.
i will keep reminding myself, over and over, to continue to unearth and reconnect.
to reaffirm my belonging to this skin,
lest i forget to stand firmly and carry the weight of this name.
Copyright ยฉ Fatma Latif
Previously published in African Urban Echoes (Griot Lounge Publishing, 2025).
Fatma is an aspiring and published writer with prose appearing in international outlets around the world, from Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Her writings carry letters of longings, and channels the messiness and healing of learning and rediscovery, always with a grounded and felt vulnerability. She maintains an active social media where more of her work is featured (i.e. on instagram fatmalatif_)
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