HERE // MESHAEL

Here’s to leaving words till the very end.
To never really gauging our reactions to what’s happening.
To evolution giving me up to stasis.
To the winter that will some day justify the idleness.
To the drowning; to the disassociation that makes the water colder and the surface farther.
To wrapping yourself with enough double entendres to make you blue.
To truly realizing what he had meant by “Morals are simply a matter of time.”
To all the times I had my heart on my sleeve only to end up with broken arms.
To the word “envelop” and how you did just that.
To your forever, to never letting it show.
To that spot that makes the buildings look like tombstones.
To just growing older, not “coming of age”.
But most of all, here’s to never writing things down.

ARRIVALS // NOUF ALHIMIARY

-i-

i write endlessly about things i could
care less about like the recurring
themes of obedience and rebellion in
Shakespearean plays, but i’m anxious
and fidgety and restless and on the edge
in my attempts to write about how you
only smiled with your mouth shut.

-ii-

the first time we spoke you said it’s
ridiculous people cared i gave myself
a bad haircut, that i flow like water and
my external body is nothing but a
container, a juice box. 
what truths would i have been let into
if i hadn’t cut you off every time you
looked so sour like you’re choking on
words? 

-iii-

yesterday 
i laid down on a rooftop and stargazed,
pearls receding the navy sky tinged
with grey dim shapes and a half 
visceral memory of feeling small around 
you, when you said my container
sometimes gets in the way when you
try to get closer to the fluid.

-iv-

lately i’ve been tracing the recollections
i hid within my sinew out of fear.
i rolled the fright and agitation and
the remnant of your essence along with 
tobacco’s pink sweet honey scented flowers
and smoked them, but the aftertaste was
still bitter.

more of nouf's photography // writing

SERENDIPITY // HALA ABDULLA

1

You tell me you find god in the
way Sunflowers shift towards
the sun, but I find him in the
way my eyes and hands always
turn to you.

2

It took you twenty-three years to
finally find me and there are days
when I resent you for this.

I’m 
sorry.

3

I do not recall any of the versions
of myself that existed before I first met
you.

I do not want to fill in the blanks
in my memory.

4

I have written love-letters to
every single hair on your head,
to every single skin cell on
your body. It is still not enough
to show you what I feel for you.

I know nothing ever will be.

5

In a world where eyes exist,
you say I shouldn’t even have
to speak. But there is so much
I want you to know that I don’t
trust my eyes to tell you.

I want you to know.
I want you to know just how
much of me you’ve healed.

6

You and I, we made religions
out of tasting one another.

(Lover, mercy me.)

7

I want to scream “I love you!”
at the top of my lungs from
each and every one of this
godforsaken city’s rooftops

but instead,
I am writing this
poem.

LETTER // ENAS SISTANI

I did not start this with the typical letter form, it does not start with dear Caroline, it never will… in fear that it might restrain what I am about to pen down for you… maybe, and for the most part, I fail at truly portraying this into a neatly packaged form. So, while you attempt to read this, you can have the full freedom to tailor it to your liking, this could be my letter to you, it could be a torn page from my journal, or it could merely be you listening attentively to what my heart whispers upon paper.

You see, my mind has been gnawing at me to write…write something, anything, and maybe it isn’t just my mind, maybe it’s my soul, or maybe it’s the permutation of all of my senses. Whatever they may be, I had to set my fingers free, tips dancing on the keyboard as they choreographed a neatly written account in your honor. We both know, however, that the only thing that matters to you is that despite my fingers well refined rhythmic dance as it writes this, all you’ll care about is needing to polish my nails. They are a mess, they always will be even when trying to praise your worthiness to the world and by God I hope you will excuse me for it.

You see, maybe I know you too well, or maybe not at all, maybe your snoring while asleep or while even laughing is what adds up to your charm. I don’t know… I never will, but to me, it surely does the trick. Or, maybe the fact that you have myriad versions of laughter is your way of tackling monotony, maybe; perhaps, you are too genuine, too unique that you fail to keep at just merely one tone of laughter, maybe you are too good to an extent that when you break into laughter, you break everyone’s world with it into a realm of surrealism, maybe when you do that, they no longer are captive to this mundane world, maybe you set them free and make them realize that only a Goddess like you can truly open their eyes to such beauty and splendor… and maybe I say this, because this is exactly what you have done to me.

I know you too well, or do I? I know that I can see gleaming innocence in your eyes and smile when you come across culinary shows, and your heart prances with sheer joy when you speak of delicately refining your nails. You speak of them, as an artist would of summer’s haze. I know that you and cooking are too inseparable, that every time you would step into the kitchen as if on a lovers date, you would leave with burn marks on your arm and if that isn’t true love, then I don’t know what is. I know that like your very bad driving skills, having no sense of proportion when it comes to parking, you fail miserably at expressing your feelings. But you see, that’s perfectly okay, Da Vinci did not trace a smile on Mona Lisa’a face, there is no sense of evident expression, yet somehow she manages to capture everyone’s heart. I know that despite your undying love for cooking, you manage to swiftly carry out an affair with your bed, you love sleeping more than anything. Maybe I know that you give out the best hugs in the world and you balance things out by exhibiting horrible grammar and punctuation, maybe I know that it’s all really okay, because despite it all, you still manage to admit that.

Maybe you can ignore my every word, like how I am having difficulties wrapping my head around you, like how I know for a fact that God perfected you, your dimple –You have one, I know… I still think you have two but the other isn’t as visible- your smile, your eyes, your honeycomb skin or even your scent… Maybe you can ignore the fact that despite your mystique, you still manage to be nothing short of a breathtaking person akin to something personified in fairytales, that when you space out, you tear up and that you tear up almost all the time.

So yes, maybe I know you too well, or maybe none at all… maybe I choose to pretend that I do, because voyagers take pride in knowing unexplored realms, and I take pride in knowing you…

Dear Caroline, I end this in such a manner.

Yours truly,
Edward

TELL HIM // SHAIMA ALSSLALI

Imagination runs its wildest when it’s close to home, you tell him that.
Tell him that he’s only brilliant in the afternoon, when the sun only casts dullness upon his soul, and obligation forces compensation.

Tell him that he’s only funny when he’s afraid; when comfort pulls his limbs apart, when a joke is so mundane that he can’t resist wallowing in.

Tell him that he’s not eloquent. Tell him he’s brutal. Tell him that I watch him distort every little nuance of meaning into binary code, into garbles of morphemes and it only amplifies the wonder of him.

Tell him that my prose is the answer to the crux of the matter. Tell him that I can’t carry his dead poetry between the worlds anymore.

Tell him that the ink is running dry and that the words are going wild and that there is absolutely no sense in my failed attempt at expression.

He will understand it. He will. Because there’s nothing in this blasted, massive excuse of a universe he hates more than missing on a prospect of a thought. He will understand because he will read this in the afternoon, when there’s nothing he could do but be brilliant.

UTENSILS // SARA W.

You'll learn more from that crack of light at the birth of dawn, than you ever will during second period. And these soulless compounds of human bodies, maybe they work around the same way a muddy puddle on the side of the road could hug the reflection of tonight's full moon.

Maybe their eyes shine with so much gleam because they carry your picture in their pupils. I see you in the midst of that gleam; I see your coffee stained shirt and the traces of sunshine on your flushed cheeks.

You go to sleep with trees growing in your arms, veins turning into branches thick enough to carry six birds and all of their nests. You're every season of the year, your fingertips are enough to hold up all the planets in outer space. You are the riches of the universe, in all of earth's bridges and specks of stars.

The streets between me and you shall break me apart, for I cannot stroke the palms of your hands and gossip to your lungs about the man they're keeping alive.

***
cover image

GAUZE AND ICE // SHAIMA ALSSLALI

Gauze:

I’ll wrap you around firmly, with haste to stop the gushing. I’ll rush through you with vehemence, and you’ll soak me up with keenness to deliver. The miles you stretch yourself for me are met by a double-digit circumference in centimetre; you run in circles around me. I never catch you, but you seem to hold the tadpoles down- for a while; a while much shorter than anticipated or desired. I seep through  you with ease of flow. A drop of silken water off a bottle’s lip can’t compare, because the force of anticipation reclines against that of failure and disintegration. You give way.

Ice:

You’re a temporary calming effect I was willing to fall into intervals for. Your touch complemented my sedentary state with surprising elegance, but in fashion nothing lasts that long. I can claim it’s my heat and ferocity that shot through you, and I can claim that your interim nature brought your dismay. I claim none- the blame game lost its charm minutes after you have, and if grace were to be mine, I’d need something on the rocks, not the rocks standing alone.

Have you ever tried to wrap ice with gauze? An ice pack neat and ready for use.

Have you ever tried to unwrap ice from gauze? The gauze rips apart like skin off ice, and you can almost feel how the ice is burning.

Thoughts of people I once loved dearly, and who are soon to be forgot.

SKIN // NOUF ALHIMIARY

1

it’s quite easy to see the colors
under your skin, your veins a
bluish green, the blood vessels
in your cheeks were always dilating
a shade of crimson. the blood vessels
underneath my eyes have always dilated
twice as much, a hint of bluish purple.
skin is not transparent, i know.
but it is translucent and light moves
right through us. you might not have
ever seen right through me, but
you got to see the ghostly shades
of the vessels dilating on my face.

2

i remember after you stopped
opening your eyes in my presence,
i spent too much time attempting to
make up ways i could outrun the
speed of light in a marathon
so even when you insist not to look at
me you’d see my ghost with the open
eyes underneath your translucent 
eyelids. (to go underneath your
skin and see your inner workings
and what error caused the production
of the sourness in your aftertaste.)

AL-AARAF // SHAIMA ALSSLALI

The poetry smudged your lines too much to see the practicality of falling from grace; you have none, and falling isn’t your strongest suit.

The poetry disregarded the organisation, and rendered you a null in the binary system; you’ve escaped the files, and no label fits your longitude.

The poetry concealed the heaven-hell satisfaction with commerciality of words, and your disgrace franchised through every stretch of discourse.

Disclaimer: we, The Poetry, are not responsible for the pity you will receive upon falling from grace. Neither are we responsible for you being too placid that you only belong on Al-Aaraf.

(Note: For those unfamiliar, Al-Aaraf is a hill between heaven and hell).