I love this city
its chaos, its cracked lungs,
its bricks that remember more than people do.
Even the pollution feels like home.

But the man next to me wants to eat me alive
because he saw my hand.
Just a hand.
Nothing more.
Yet it’s enough to make him think he owns me.

Thousands of rapes
no one whispers.
But you always know the ******
long before you ever hear the victim speak.

They sell my Prophet’s name
in plastic wrappers,
swing it like a weapon.
The sermons shorter than your temper,
your cursing louder than your prayers.

You talk of God
as if He’s yours to guard.
But the God I know
forgives His children
a thousand times
before raising His voice.

And still, I love every corner of this city.
Even the dirt, even the blood,
even the silence.

Just not the breath of the man beside me,
breathing like he's God.

You’re crying because he stopped texting.
Gaza is crying
because her little brother didn’t come back from the bakery.

You say your heart is shattered.
Gaza’s father held his daughter’s pieces
in both hands
and said nothing.
There are no words when your child dies warm.

You complain about the heat.
Gaza is burning.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
With bodies they can’t put out
because the water is gone.

You don’t like loud noises.
Gaza counts silence like blessings.
Silence means bombs are reloading,
not falling.

You’re sad you weren’t invited to the party.
Gaza didn’t get to plan her sister’s birthday.
She planned her funeral instead.
The same dress.
Different occasion.

You hate hospitals.
Gaza lives in them
on the floor,
under candlelight,
where doctors use bare hands
because tools ran out before the children did.

You’re annoyed the power went out for ten minutes.
Gaza hasn’t seen light in weeks.
They read prayers off their palms
because the Qur’an turned to ash.

You want peace and quiet.
Gaza begs God
for just one night
where the walls don’t shake
like they’re screaming.

You said, “The world’s unfair.”
Gaza agrees —
but says it with no tongue,
no teeth,
no face left to speak.

You lit a candle for ambiance.
Gaza lights one
because the bodies
have to be found
before sunrise.

And still
Gaza sings.
Not lullabies.
But names.
A list of souls
carved into memory
because graves
are running out.

You saw me naked.
Completely. Undressed.
At midnight, probably, when the world was quiet and I wasn’t.
But tell me
how many stitches do I have on my left hand?
You saw skin
Not the naked truth
Can you undress me
without touching a single button?
Can you strip the shame from my spine,
the memory from my knees,
the fear from the corner of my mouth?

You can’t.
And you didn’t.
So don’t tell me you’ve seen me.

The world waits, bleeding
an empty canvas cracked and bruised,
hungry for the pain you hide,
for the truth you’re too afraid to speak aloud.

You can paint their lies again,
recycle old ghosts like comfort blankets,
or you can bleed ink
rip open your soul and spill its darkness raw.

This is no gentle call
it’s a reckoning.
The silence is choking, the shadows closing in,
and only the brutal truth will cut through the rot.

You are the fracture,
the jagged edge they fear
the voice that won’t be silenced,
the fire that devours the lies.

Write with scars,
create with fury
because this empty canvas demands more than pretty words.

It demands your soul,
your rage, your brokenness
or it will swallow you whole.

So, what will you do?
Hide in shadows or burn the night down?

Upon the vestibule of the eleventh veil,
'Neath vaults where seraphim dare not exhale,
I chanced upon a silhouette enwreathed in negation
Neither eidolon nor essence,
but that which prefigures the divine
before divinity knew its name.

He bore not visage, but a ruin of remembrance
a sanctified lacuna
once nestled in my marrow’s hymn.

“Art thou God?” I dared in syllables of silence.
He spake not, yet the ether trembled:

“I am the sovereign thou immolated
upon the pyres of adaptation,
the eidetic specter thou excommunicated
to appease the feasting swarm of the Real.”

His breath was time inverted.
His eyes -unlit aeons blooming in reverse.

“Thou didst auction thy numinous architecture
to stitch masks from mortal necessity.
Now thou seekest me not as pilgrim,
but as revenant.”

I fell prostrate in velvet ash.
The cosmos fractured into cognizance.

“Reclaim me,” I implored.
“Re-sanctify the citadel I once was.”

But He, I -that which was once the first fire
dispersed like the hush of God's forgotten thought.

And I knew:
God had not forsaken me.
I had forsaken the god within me
to become understandable.

Heaven has to be real, Dad.
Because if it’s not,
then where the hell do I send all this love?

Where do I put the stories I was saving to tell you,
the ones I practiced in my head,
just in case you came back
for five more minutes?

I’m doing it now, you know.
The life.
The one you never got to live.

I eat dinner alone, just like you did.
I laugh at jokes you'd love.
I fix things the way you tried to teach me
except you’re not here to tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Or that you're proud.
God, I would've given anything
just to hear you say you're proud.

I go to places you dreamed of.
I stand where you wanted to stand.
I look up at the sky you always talked about

but it never feels like enough
because you can’t see it with me.
You can’t say,
"That’s beautiful, kid."
And I don’t know how to feel joy
without feeling guilty for surviving you.

Some nights,
I swear I hear your voice when I’m between sleep and memory.
You say,
"Keep going."
But I don’t know if that’s you
or just the echo of my need.

I try to believe you’re somewhere,
watching.
But most days I feel like I’m putting on a show
for a ghost
who forgot how to clap.

I’ve prayed.
God knows I’ve prayed.
But prayers feel like messages sent to old phone numbers.
No bounce-back.
No reply.
Just the silence of a universe
that took you too soon
and gave nothing back.

So Heaven has to be real, Dad.
Because otherwise I’m loving a corpse.
Otherwise I’m walking through your old dreams
with no one to hand them to.

Otherwise I’m just
your unfinished sentence.
A comma hanging midair
where your voice should’ve kept going.

Please let it be real.
Please let there be more.
Please tell me
you didn’t disappear into the dirt
without at least one window left open
for me to say goodbye properly.

Because I wasn’t ready.

And you
weren’t
done.

If he ends up in heaven,
and I’m not next to him,
don’t call it paradise.

Call it punishment.

Call it exile in gold.

Call it a throne built on everything I lost
and every prayer You ignored.

Because how could it be holy
to watch him laugh beside someone else,
forever?