It wasn’t in her name that people understood who she was,
It wasn’t in her body that people found her soul.
It wasn’t her eyes that windowed her life,
Neither was it her hands that proved her strength all whole.

It was the way she dried her flowers along the hooks of her curtains,
It was the way she held the lights – lightly and lithely along her fingers, spaced and yet un-lingered.
It was the way she walked with a pause and a hop,
It was the way she danced without the beat of music’s tick and tock. 

It was the way her heart poured out at the tips of her hair,
In the viscous mix of brown, ebony and gold.
But ‘gold’ was not a colour she would behold,
Behold would be her innermost essence being the maroon unfold.