Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

It is the light

Bea Petrova reminisces on home and memory in this comforting poem.

It is the light

That engulfs me 

Its fingers of dust waltzing ever so softly 

Treading air and falling, falling, falling to the sound of 

Footsteps

It is my grandma’s smile

And her laugh

And her light

It wraps around me 

Sheltering me from a reality that melts away 

With the leaded pace of these summer days

There is a place on earth at the end of time 

Which seems to be all mine

Not a home

But a place

Where I can hear my mother’s voice 

Still travelling, crossing spatial barriers, carried by light beams

Tracing the timeline of her ephemeral youth

It is a place where I can breathe

And with every watercolour landscape I tread through

Past and present converge 

But they do not clash 

They are two temporal tones, dashing and clasping

Waves in a precarious confrontation

Instead, the two linger in the air 

Those there feel their honey-soaked stare

Carried by the smell of salt and warmth

Their hearts are filled somewhere in the North

It is a place where I clutch at the lucid light

Where remnants of my own voice

Will soon be trapped between wooden beams 

Fixing in place a time 

It is within these realms that I exist boundlessly 

Image Credit: Katie Kirkpatrick.

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles