Melancholy by Hind

Her daughter is ill. She spent the last four weeks packing clothes for her because the treatment made her too weak to walk.

“They say the operation is risky,” she tells me.

I try to study her face, but the window behind her lets in too much sunlight. She is a talking silhouette. Continue reading

Melancholy by Manasi

Seas and oceans. Does it matter? It’s all the same anyway – the monochrome blue, the earl grey with a stain of sorrow, and the frothy slush that clashed against itself to cease into mist.

The cascading rocks, jagged to the core pierce more than the thin screen of her skin. Continue reading

Seeds by Hawra’a Khalfan

The institute of education is now corrupt,
it has been refashioned
from something that was so pure-
from purely wanting to spread knowledge, and
to influence,
to nurture those who will be brilliant.
The institute of education has now become:
Do the minimum you can, to get a grade, which will tell you how smart you are.
Memorize words without understanding the depth behind them. Continue reading

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” by Hawra’a Khalfan

I feel your loss

I feel it oozing out of your being and devouring you entirely.

My kin,

I know.

Because we,

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Because we,

Donated our hearts, desires, thoughts, and dreams for them.

We surrendered to their tenderness

We surrendered to their compassion

We surrendered to our love for their love and so

we gave it all up to keep them.

It was never going to be enough and we knew that

But it was always worth trying.

Our now hollow bodies have lost both them, and ourselves.

I know how it is

to tell me of your sleepless nights in hospital rooms;

to tell me of your atrophy

And I feel you, blood.

I feel your words echoing on my insides.

I feel you because I too have lost

I too have had to build myself up.

I continue to cement together the atoms that make me up.

Inch upon inch I am now glued together in a mosaic of destruction

just waiting to collapse,

expecting the ultimate defeat.

You speak of his good deeds and

I wish to speak of hers, too.

I mourn for her with her every inhale and exhale.

I mourn for her every time I take a look at her smiling face.

I mourn for her even as she’s mouthing me the words

“I love you.”

Echo by Suha

I had lived a life full of images,
right from wrong, false from truth, this I never understood.
my mind always yearned for a pixelated utopia at the mercy of my thumbs
and this is where I sought sanctuary for decades.
I denied myself comforts of a family, I denied myself a life of leisure
chasing endlessly an ideology I did not believe in.
I turned my back to the oasis of faith, I heard no one but myself.
Continue reading