IN ENGLISH

FOOD FOR THOUGHT, LITERALLY // REEM SABRA

For breakfast today, we sat at the kitchen and, like I learned in my etiquette class, I folded a napkin on my lap and helped you fold yours [you had clumsy hands]. We then took turns feeding each other things we both wanted to hear.

[‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’ We were both professional murderers by now.]

For lunch, I sat alone, elegantly using the fork, spoon, and knife in their respective order to dissect our conversations. I grew too full and had to stop mid-way, though.

[I don’t know how to occupy my skin so I occupy yours, I spread out and invade every square inch of it.]

For dinner, we sat at opposite ends of the table, giving each other our backs, and fed on the gnawing silence that we harbored and looked after.

[We are too heavy. am too heavy and there’s no space for me in you anymore.]

UNTITLED // REEM SABRA

1.
I wrote three poems and two
prose about you in my sleep
but then I woke up and
couldn’t remember a word.

2.
You took a hammer
and obliterated all the walls
separating my organs.
When I asked you,you said
it was because you wanted to hear the steady lub-dub
of my heart muscle more clearly.

3.
When I ruffled your hair my hand
pulled back with
tufts of it. We pretended it never happened.

4.
You asked me to lean in;
you needed to wash the bitter aftertaste of the boiled cauliflower
you were forced to eat.
“Can’t a dying man get a decent gourmet meal around here?”
The sound of your restricted esophagus and
choked cough echoed off the walls and
reverberated
through me.

5.
You teased me about my
newly-shaved head, said the nurses would
think we have a bromance going on.

6.
My alarm didn’t go off and
Prince Charles, my dog
(you scoffed at his name)
had a fit and chewed
most of my clothes
the bathroom sink
wasn’t working.

7.
Your bed was empty today.

ALPHIE BY THE COAST // SHAIMA ALSSLALI

It was a Friday like any other; the salty air resisted the rigidity of winter, picking up whatever survived of the humidity slain by December in its trail. The coastal town stood in a fixed point of reminiscence for the liveliness of their summer nights, or, in more honest terms, the money they brought. It may be that the plus-10,000 population of this rustic haven romanticise their existence by default, but if you’re fed cool breeze and crystal blue in place of bitter coffee and fume, there’s no escaping the theatrics.
 

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A REMINDER // HAYAT

There are flowers exhaling what you one day will inhale after a laughter.

Or a heart break so big it’ll shatter you and then recollect you whole, and into a new kind of beautiful. And every single time that will happen, someone out there is writing a poem about it and calling it “a miracle”.

When you have some free time, and open the door for more than the person behind you, the smiles you receive will grow festivals in your heart. The kindness we sometimes find in strangers is probably why the sky is so colourful and alive at times.

There are books that reflect the colour of your eyes, how you move, every single inch of your skin, on rivers and mountains and gods. Gods.

Your being is sometimes written in a relation to gods.

SOME THINGS WE SHOULD NEVER TURN OUR BACKS ON // RAGHAD

gravitating towards the door
revolving/evolving
because
i am what i choose,
i've been begging for 
heaven
since the first time 
i saw the sky
i'm a static mess
i want to coalesce 
with its meaning
.i want the door.
a long time ago
a few heavy sunsets ago
i was an emptiness

you riot,
does the pomegranate taste sweeter where you rest? 
is the relief palpable? 
are you breathing deeper?
you're still making choices
still becoming

summer child
june chose the deathbed
never had drier eyes
we had a few laughs
to lighten up all things inevitable
we're still making choices
still becoming

if heaven sits like a crown
upon the head of the firmament
how much wonder does it take 
how many choices still left
to reach it?

THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS OF A MESSY NEWLY ADULT ON A SATURDAY // NOUF ALHIMIARY

  1. Yawning on Saturday noon, thinking of how real life loses appeal when the pace of its emotional payoff and gratification is compared to that of extremely well written scripts and narratives that grip at the squishy, doughy, soft spot real life has the tendency to zoom over. 
  2. Talking to a blank document: you’d think speaking three languages would’ve given me more means to express meaning, but I lag behind every time I attempt to ingest words with the brute force of an avalanche as meaning escapes me running at breakneck speed to get out of my reach, while I’m still translating words, and embedding nonexistent expressions. 숨이 막혀 계속.
  3. I think I’ve gone partially mad sitting in front of a computer, trying to get any work done.

 

LATE NIGHT TALK // REEM SABRA

I hide in between my self-reassurances, my 4 AM pep talks; I make space between the I and can and sit cross-legged on the top floor, just above the I and will. When the nights are rough and the hideous Can’ts come out of the tucked edges of my bed sheets. I fold them neatly back in, and let out the knowledge that rests just below my eyelids that I was not created a half, that there is nothing missing, and that I am whole.

I pull the Don’t Worries over me and allow the It’s Okays to lull me to sleep.

8. // REEM

i wonder about the wooden rooms and the haunted hotels of baden-baden right now, for no reason, just a pointless thought, a travelling beau on the back of the mental asylum. i would hold his hand and never let go if he asks me to, bum bumming with him forever (3 years because after that i die).