A poetic tribute to a child who touched the world only briefly, yet left an eternal imprint of love, loss, and divine light. For a soul that brushed this world only for a breath, yet left an eternity of love behind. For the fragile body that endured the world’s cruelty and grew wings instead of scars….
“How very quietly you tiptoed into the world, only for a moment you stayed.
But what an imprint your tiny footprints left on our hearts.”
— Dorothy Ferguson.
“There is no light at all in her womb,”
the doctor was revealed to me in a dream, speaking of my pregnant sister.
“Yes… there is another light in her womb.
Look! He is made entirely of light!”
she insisted.
Now everything was clear.
She had not seen the light of life because its glow had dissolved into the extinguished infant resting in her arms.
She had seen the Light of God, melting into the radiance of his face.
Ah, little one… I was waiting for you to call me uncle,
sighed his brother, his voice choking in his throat.
The groom’s eyes filled with tears as well.
But they held them back — manhood demanded it.
She, however, had the freedom of the entire world to cry, with the inconsolable wail of a woman over that innocent infant who had hovered for ten days between life and death.
During those ten days of agony, his tiny body was martyred in every possible way, as doctors clung fiercely to their sacred mission.
But his lungs never tasted the air of this world, imprisoned inside an incubator.
He never opened his little eyes — for he chose a light better than the light of life.
He came like a butterfly, only to make his final flight within the glass walls of the incubator, where after ten days his little heart came to rest…
The car was moving toward the village.
It was taking him home — a home that until yesterday had been overflowing with joy for the boy they expected to grow into a man.
“A whole village from him,” they used to say.
Now, those same people were gathering for condolences.
The road felt long. Endless.
And the car seemed to hurry, as if returning him to his mother’s arms — to reunite them for the first time.
For he had never known maternal warmth… and this reunion would be the last.
Streams of burning tears scorched her cheeks.
They scorched even the lid of the coffin, engraved with the words:
“Exitum Letraris.”
She wanted to see more than just the date of his death.
She wanted to see him — even though she had never wished to see him like this.
To know him now, as a lifeless body.
Slowly, she opened the bundle and stared at him with eyes washed in tears.
His tiny body rested in divine stillness.
She traced him from head to toe with her hand, discerning his small limbs — extinguished — as if trying to make peace with the fragility of a body that seemed almost alive.
She removed the covering from his face.
A small forehead appeared. A tiny nose.
A radiant cheek, stained with blood.
She dared not touch him again.
She washed him with her tears.
Only then did she feel how unbearably painful it is when a life is extinguished before it has even begun.
His head rested near her heart.
Her hand lay over his heart —
that tiny heart which could not survive the savagery of this world.
A sudden braking of the car jolted them.
She clutched him tightly, afraid his little body might be hurt —
that his back, already an open wound since the moment he entered life, might be wounded again.
For a moment, she forgot that death had taken him into its arms, and that he felt nothing anymore.
Her closeness would never again make him cry, as it had on the day he first felt his mother’s presence.
He would never move again like he did yesterday, when doctors allowed his father to touch him — once hope had already vanished.
He would never again feel signs of life.
The thread that bound him to this world had been severed forever.
In the village, everyone came out to meet them.
She searched for the mother, wanting to place the infant into the sisters empty arms who had given birth.
Near the broken womb, filled with poison, to wet his frozen lips with the milk of her breast.
But the grandmother of child was there instead of her. She saw her mother and collapsed helplessly into her arms.
In that moment, time stopped.
She froze amid everyone’s cries, with the dead infant in her embrace.
“Mother’s flower… Mother’s light…”
came the mother’s twisted voice, as she placed him into the cradle adorned with hand-embroidered linens, made with the greatest love.
The cradle that had awaited him alive — to rock him and put him to sleep.
Into the sleep of life…. But he touched the world only briefly, yet left an eternal imprint of love, loss, and divine light. His soul brushed this world only for a breath, yet left an eternity of love behind. His fragile body that endured the world’s cruelty grew wings instead of scars…. Now, the body of little Gezim(Joy…!) rests in Fusha e Thatë, and his pure soul plays among the angels.
Ajetë Sh. Beqiraj,
14th july 2002,Kryshec,Peja.