This Sunday is anything but restful, for it brings a world of regret to my doorstep. Had I done the right thing by lighting a match to my first creation? And just then as the fear of failure was about to devour me whole, a sign is given as the heavens open, and the rains pour like weeping angels and saints to join in my sorrow for what once was. My first tear falls for the last time as I feel like God in Eden after Eve had taken her bite of the forbidden fruit. Had I acted in haste to destroy everything Maryam and I had written, it feels like my own expulsion from paradise. I do not wish to be that kind of God—the one who answers loss with exile and love with a closed gate. And yet, in the writing of these very words, I feel I am not a God of banishment but of forgiveness and second chances. Maryam's part in the story may have changed, but she still runs through it like a scarlet thread woven through a piece of embroidery—guided by my hand, always essential to the pattern.

 

Maryam whispers softly in my ear: What falls shall always be lifted, not in your name alone, but through everybody who remembers the beginning they share. She came to me not as a delusion, but as a spirit dwelling within me, claiming an inheritance for us both—for Eve, the first woman, and for every woman who has carried the blame laid at her feet for the fall of mankind. For centuries, the story stood unchallenged and unclaimed, and so, men built their world upon that silence—upon a version of events where blame travelled in only one direction. I do not argue with Maryam. I do not rewrite the past. Instead, I return with her to the seventh day, before the telling of the moment of temptation. Eve is there. She is not weak, not foolish, not waiting to be led. And the serpent is there also, but not of flesh and scale. It is a presence—a voice without sound, heard only by Eve. And now us to bear witness. Had man not named that presence the devil, one might easily mistake it for God.

 

"Where is the tree? I ask.

 

"Where is the Tree of Knowledge and Wisdom?"

 

Here we stand, Three Women in a new Eden, and at its heart grows Maryam, a tree whose fruit is blessed, not forbidden, but freely given—stories, wisdom, and knowledge for all who seek them.

 

I stand beneath her branches and wonder what I have to offer. I am no virgin. I have no immaculate conception, no story of a saviour son to tell. Mine is a far more ordinary gospel: of scraped knees and broken hearts, of school runs and burnt toast, of dreams postponed and tears shed in silence.

 

Yet perhaps that is enough.

 

For not every mother is called to bring a saviour into the world. Some are simply called to raise children, carry burdens, and leave behind a story that tells another weary soul they were never alone.

 

 

......✍️

 

 

 

My family begins to drift into the kitchen from their slumber. I stop writing and busy myself with breakfast. They greet me as if it were just another Sunday morning, and to them it is. While the kettle boils, I slip my diary back into the drawer, for they must never know about Maryam and me. Some secrets are best left unsaid, and to this day my vow of silence still stands—perhaps hidden beneath the guise of a ghostwriter, but it stands nonetheless.

 

Such secrets and lies will not get our breakfast made. Five eggs are dropped into the boiling water, and the time is noted for lift-off in three minutes. How I yearn to pull out my diary and put ink to paper, for ideas are coming fast and heavy this morning. But patience has never been my strongest trait. So, I let the thoughts percolate in my mind and hope they are not stolen and gifted to another before I have the chance to polish and perfect them. But Maryam whispers softly, Ten people may have the same thought, but each will write it from their own frame.

 

 

.........✍️

 

I'm now in a dream of doing, actions are winning over words in my world, where the venomeous voice of doubt no longer lurks in the shadows to hinder my natural gravitation toward my birthright purpose. Some may say, she has the audacity to rise above her station but let them for their opinions of me are none of my business. They get to judge  my daydreaming if I let them disintegrate my bank of fulfillment which is solvent at last. A sense of joy overcomes me as I write between the lines in my journal, a small miracle for me considering where I came from. 

 

........✍️ 

 

 with the eggs coming to the boil, five cups await the individuals' preference. The table is set for my family to take their seats, the seats they have always occupied. Who sits at the head depends on the angle from which you look for every seat has its day in the sun. Teaspoons tap tops softly to crack open shells and a pinch of salt is sprinkled over a yoke that is hard or runny. Our meal is eaten without grace, yet our laughter and idle chatter feel like a prayer.

 

Seats are pushed back from the table and pushed back into place as my hubby Joseph, two daughters and son retire to the sitting room off the kitchen to facebook or X on their phones, I clear the table of dirty dishes, collecting the broken empty eggshells and break them down into pieces.  As they crackle in my hand, the crunching trigger a memory of walking on eggshells around my family.