You were limbo
I knew you but I didn’t
Our kisses were glimpses of an unforeseen death
Oh, by I saw it
I smelled it on your sweat as it dried up on ny chest
I touched it on your face just before I scratched it bloody
You were a terminal
Known but so unknown
A gateway to hell
And passage to my own distruction
You killed me
I killed me
I held your neck and sucked you dry
Oh, but it was me who was bleeding
Blood drops slowly made their way out of every patch of skin you kissed
Out of my eyes that you looked so deeply into
Out of the words you tigtly sheathed and held close to your heart
Were they my eyes that you were looking into?
Was my blood laced with memories of her?
Were my claws too sharp for your skin to bare?
You and your armor
Me and my naked heart
I screamed for you to listen
Bit your ears off for they might have been faulty
Banged my fists against the walls, the floors the ceiling, YOUR ARMOR
Only to find bloody pieces of me hanging from every corner of this cell
My skin, my eyes, my lungs and my fingertips
Have them them for breakfast, lunch and dinner
Savor my blood
And i hope to some existing god that I will be that stubborn piece of flesh stuck between your teeth
And then tell me, how your armor protected you from the inebriation of my love
Category Archives: Terminal
Terminal by Hawra’a Khalfan
I look up at the fluorescent lights; at the perfectly lined up squares covering the ceiling. My eyes flirt with the smoke detector, as my mind wanders to a world where I have the health to light up a cigarette, and set it off. Ironic, isn’t it? That when you can, you justify it. But when it might possibly be the reason you’re in this mess to begin with; you don’t loathe it- but you loathe yourself for letting it slaughter you.
A smirk creeps onto my face abruptly. Oh, the amount of people I may never have known if it wasn’t for it. And as soon as my smirk settled; it fluttered off by her voice.
She screams, as if her soul is in yearn for an escape.
She bawls, as if there was nothing left to live for, but pain.
She howls, as a reminder to all the provinces, that she, unfortunately still exists.
She cries from the agony of breath.
She is now laying still, as tears camouflage her face
And her mind jolts itself into the darkest corner within, she
thinks of him,
thinks of them,
alongside everything there is to think about, before she can think no more.
She feels aches in every lump of her that still exists
But the most painful ache there is,
Is that despite all of this; all she yearns for
Is to have him stand beside her mechanical bed
And hover over her, silently.
Terminal by Bader A. Shehab
It was suppose to be the end,
The end of all conflicts,
The end of all beginnings,
and the end of it all…
The inevitable breath that forecasted
a thunderstorm of cries into the nights
that turned to day in the wake of shellings.
They whistled and hurled into the mist,
and the fog that condensed ghosts into hordes,
magically wandering the trenches
as their bewildering grows.
Not the hands that shook,
nor the suits that shone,
shoulder-cut and pressed
to a perfecting being.
The Oxfords that sounded
into the empty halls of diplomacy.
Could bring this war into a halting terminal.
Take me back to my wife, mother and brothers…
I am a long lost soul in the golden burials of man’s greed.
– Epitaph of a fallen hero on an unmarked grave.
Terminal by Fatma Al Shehab
05I was old enough to remember the doctors and the teachers and the therapists
all painting their tombs white when they thought I wasn’t looking.
“You’re just a little sick, sweetie. It’ll be okay.”
Says who? The brain scans, or you?
I spent my nights wrapped up in bleach white sheets
listening to my heart thump on a little silver machine.
I had this reoccurring nightmare where it just stopped.
I guess growing up like that makes you different from the other kids.
Having different childhoods, different lives, different fates.
Other children spent their Saturdays playing tag with daddy.
I spent mine barfing up dinner and listening to mommy cry.
Experiencing this affliction physically hurts
But I think, for me at least,
the emotional damage always cuts the deepest.
I remember feeling guilty when mom went to the other room to cry,
like maybe it was somehow my fault I was Terminal.
I stopped looking at other little girls in the eyes
because I always seemed to find something I lacked.
At the time, I think I called it ‘hope’.
My life became weaved together with words like ‘life expectancy’ and ‘treatment options’.
Every time I fell asleep, it became a habit of mine to say goodbye just in case.
A little girl should never have to think about dying in her sleep.
Ever.
Writing this wasn’t meant to solicit sympathy,
I am sharing my struggle with you in the hopes that you might find hope in what I am today.
So yes, I am still sick,
but now I know that ‘sick’ is not who I am.
Kuwait Writing Club 