The Sun Rises and it Breaks my Heart.
20.02.2021

I wake & I tread lightly
I trip over should’s & shouldn’t’s
I walk by strange faces wearing a friendly smile
I walk among buildings furnished with secrets
I look for the children of the streets and pray for their dreams
I hold the hands of broken women and sing to them
I carry the men lost in heavy suits and soften their sun-cracked foreheads.

I gather them all and
I wait for the sun to set
Away from 9-5’s and rush hours
The should’s and shouldn’t’s
and I tell them that we are all fireflies
Trapped in mason jars
All we have to do is look into ourselves and find the light to burst through the world
and together we will dance, and we will survive.

Twenty-Eight.
18.10.2020

So I gather them
Images of me
Images of you
Moments in time

I curl them into a ball
and tuck them into the cracks of my palms
As they sink into my life-lines
Holding onto one another
Until there are no heart pulses left to spare

I close my eyes
and blow them away
To disintegrate into the world, into history, into time
Like stardust
Sprinkling across a shattered sky

And I watch
As they organize themselves
Into a constellation of stars soon forgotten.

Last Night, I Prayed
25.04.2020

When the call to prayer came
and the people woke from their sleep
with their dreams on hold
and their nightmares put to rest
she didn’t pray
she sat on her bed
and closed her eyes
and colored her sight with the fading starlight
lending her soul to the echoes of prayer
and when it was over
and she was left with the sounds of the birds chirping
calling for the sun to rise
never did she feel so strong and so fragile
all at once.

عندما أتى النداء للصلاة 
وأفاق الناس من نومهم
 و أحلامهم معلقة
 و كوابيسهم خامدة
 هي لم تصلي 
بل جلست على سريرها 
و أغمضت عينيها 
و لونتهما بضوء النجوم المتلاشية 
مسلمة روحها لصدى الصلاة
وعندما انتهى 
وبقيت مع صوت تغريد العصافير ينادي الشمس أن تشرق 
بكت 
لم تشعر من قبل أبدا بقوتها و ضعفها 
في آن واحد

It’s a Thursday night
And it’s miles and miles
of tail lights flashing red
bleeding into tiny spaces left between cars crammed
jammed, forced next to one another
like strangers who have nothing in common but everything.

I think about the loudness of traffic
teasing the uninvited silence of all these lives interrupted by time that no longer belongs to us.

I think about those broken-hearted lovers going home the loneliness that sits deep into passenger seats
filling the void of someone astray
parked next to those with unfinished love stories hanging on to leftover moments with
T’s uncrossed and I’s undotted.

And I hear a song on the radio that tells me words mean more at night.

So I look for the rebels of the night
who can’t be kept sunrise to sunrise
or leave a word unsaid
pouring myself into the poetry of the night sky
and there, I find freedom.