Hijab – By Christopher Penrose

I realized that you are beautiful by your voice.
It is the sound of the love of life,
a pitch still free from the hardness of hurt.









You spoke with a certainty in the strength of your intelligence.
You sounded nine years old and forty-nine years old and one-hundred and nine years old
…most likely, nineteen years old.

Your palms are a white, sandy cream.
They are imprinted with clearly set lines of brown, exactly where they should be.
The brown lines on your palms look like ink that flowed from your arms and settled neatly in the grooves.

Your fingers:
slim, not chubby
rounded, not boney
long, not lanky.
My eyes can tell that your skin is soft, worth the long process for the permission to touch, and to be touched by…

I will not attempt to explain your eyes.
I will only tell you that they revealed an image, a painting of your life;
your life as a daughter,
your aptitude as a scholar,
your drive to achieve and to change the world with a contribution,
proving every doubt wrong – whether in the form of a thought, a scornful gaze or a spoken word –
your life confirming, and surpassing, what was seen by the few who perceived what you fight to manifest, before you had the chance birth it.

I saw you sleeping and dreaming, then awake and laughing.
I saw you cooking with the love of family wrapped around you.
I saw the blossom of your passion.

Only your eyes could be seen behind the veil over your face.
Only your hands could be seen through the cloth that draped your body.
I heard your voice as you spoke to another, and it was enough.