2 poems by Halima Juma Adam

A ray of hope

A sunshine at a cloudy day
A light in the dark
A drop of cold water
On a hot-dry sunbathed skin
At the heart of a sunny day
In the middle of sandy desert
Where everything feels cruel

A hope in the misery
A relief in the pain
A breath in the suffocation
A strength in the weakness
That’s all one dreams
When the days look blur
The body feels numb
The emotions feel blue
The thoughts are harsh
The voices speak hate
And everything you touch
Feels like its rejecting
The mere sight of you

A ray of hope
Can be anything 
Anything you had given hope in
And suddenly, you get surprised by it
It can be an acceptance
That you have long waited for
It can be an arrival of someone 
Or something that seemed impossible
It can be just a thought you had forgotten about
A face in your mind that got lost
In between the dark thoughts

A ray of hope
Is what we all need
When darkness visits
And seems to not be leaving
Anytime soon





The storms

There are storms in each one’s universe
I don’t know if it’s possible 
To storm melodies all the times
But I do know that,
It can storm stones and coldness throughout
Am not sure about the sun 
Being the brightest star 
In everyone’s universe
But I believe in having 
That which shines brighter than all 
In each universe

How do we identify it?
That which shines the brightest?
Everyone has its own 
It cannot be the same in everyone
Or is it?

That which shines brighter than all
Is it the source of trouble or the cure?
Cause it obviously has greater effects 
On the storms in each one’s universe
Kinda like how the sun affects our lives? 

The mind really is a universe
With everything that goes on in there
It takes a universe to accommodate what the mind can 
And each universe is different

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Halima Juma Adam is a schoolteacher and a creative writer, who writes her imaginations, thoughts, and feelings in the forms of stories and poems, in both English and Swahili languages. Two of her poems have been accepted for publishing by two outstanding magazines based in Africa. One is, ‘you will know it when it comes for them’ published by Writers space Africa, Death edition – November 2020. The second one is, ‘the immortal lord’ which will be published before the end of 2022 by the Voices of Africa: A Call for Freedom Anthology. 

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