Beautiful sea breeze
How quickly you become a storm
You’re built of resilience
You bring with you an entourage
Of silver lining and moon tides
Sailor’s boats and lighthouse guides

Yet you still shy away from burning bridges
That monsters love to cross

You’ve befriended discomfort,
Left behind your childhood streets,
only to walk down dark foreign ones.
You kiss away your mother tongue,
Surrendering to an unfamiliar one.

                      ...............

Your battles are carved into my blood vessels
and I will carry them with me
as reminders of patience and faith

You in your full bloom, at peace,
like swirling honey in warm milk,
made of rich pigment and velvet petals.

take a breath, and paint a picture,
of the transient atmosphere,
and you swaying with the ocean breeze.

send it to that part of you
that is lost in endless worry.

In the fabric of time exists
moonlit seas of happenstance
and rose-scented memories
sewed in with golden beads
but it seems to me that life has found a way,
to sew in worn-out frayed threads,
that have lost their silky reflection

yet you,
with your resilient skin
found a way to make
embroidered mosaics of colour
out of the dissonance between good and bad

Shades of burnt orange and saffron
in clusters between the clouds,
the coolness of the atmosphere
brought ease to my swollen eyes
the bitterness on my tongue washed away
as if caramel was poured into the sky,
sweetness inhabited my lungs
and I uttered...

سُبْحَانَ الله

She glides past vendors of fried food as her bare feet skid across the muddy gravel. The pain of the gliding thread left behind with her shoes. A toothy grin and a joyous laugh switch phases like a sound wave as her eyes follow the kite carrying all her dreams.

Two withering souls
Lost in downtown fog
With their stories written in neon lights
And their destinies tied together
Gazing at each other
Through the reflection
Of blazing streetlights
In hidden puddles
Scattered around vacant parking lots
Dancing like ghosts
With honey on their tongues
A million longing words
Without ever uttering one
A sleeping city tells their tale
Of a longing moon and a loving sun