When I Forgot To Remember. Poem by Olorunkemi Kareem

There were nights I sealed my heart like a tomb,
Burying every prayer beneath the rubble of doubt.
Still, You came—
soft as the dawn,
loud as the muezzin's call,
steady as the church bell that split my darkness.

When I wandered,
chasing the mirage of my own stubbornness,
You let me stray just far enough
to know the taste of emptiness.
And when I turned back,
Your mercy did not scold—
it embraced me like the tide
returning a lost boat to shore.

You were the unseen hand
in every small deliverance,
the hidden balm
on every wound I pretended did not hurt.
You were the quiet voice
in my ribcage,
whispering hope in tongues I had forgotten.

La ilaha illallah—
there is no god but You,
the Compassionate, the Near.
And in the hush between my doubts,
I hear the echo:
God with us—Emmanuel.

Even when I called You only in crisis,
when my gratitude was a shallow thing,
when my faith was thin as a sigh—
You stayed.
And so today, with a heart that finally sees
the trace of Your fingerprints
in every mercy—
I say:

Alhamdulillah, Emmanuel.