Time, heavy as a thousand suns combined,/ Bends mothers, smaller than the ones they bore,

What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight

Your tea in the kettle, piping hot water/ No sugar, so that you can really taste the tea on your tongue

This universe’s heart is hollow now for humanity has died inside it.

Spacious, shiny, new roads are built in my city to rent them for raw-markets

The hush of dawn and the whispered breeze,/ that caresses nature's resting face

She stands in front of the canvas and stares.

the moon watches over you, when whales beach themselves, the tides wash them back home; the moon looks down

News from Gaza rips the heart open/ Idlib is burning too

Eurydice, his beloved,  lost to the shades, In the underworld's depths,  where darkness pervades.

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

It is odd that nowadays One seldom hears the words

Tell me what to say when I need to speak, If I have to say something, So what can I say: look at that

Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred

I remember the wallowing hole inside of my chest, / hollow and bleeding

Once, I believed there was a crown on my head. The heart was brimming with life and light Brimming with boundless force to surpass any spread. Among the crowd, I was always one

The pavements are hotter in winter, the rain never wets the asphalt and I never tell you to do anything else other than “be”. 

And along with our bodies, the rage keeps on, / we chafe and bleed and clot and steer; / we go mad and nude

And in spite of knowing this/ In spite of the absurdity of it all/ You let yourself fall

Veering off from stories for a bit, Fahim Anzoom Rumman’s “The Secret” was a breath of fresh air. The piece seemed to be a cross between a poem and the kind of fable your grandparents would tell you as a kid to get you to fall asleep.