picture this: you’re a child and nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes.

your mother tells you it will be okay because your nation is like no other and you think: she’s either naïve, or she’s lying.

(it’s probably the former because she’s much happier than you and you’re a child who has yet to see enough shades of blue.)

this is why she’s wrong:
you’re a child and you don’t learn about the world wars of the twentieth century because you live in a city that predates any and all gods; in the cradle of civilisation, and your history textbooks are full of summarised stories about hundreds of kingdoms that have risen and fallen right here, beneath your feet.

and that is why you’re not naïve:
who is to say that your nation is like no other when the city you live in is still an enigma, built on the ruins of seven cities that shared her name, like the same phoenix burning over and over and rising again and again, in a constant state of death and rebirth? humanity is ephemeral, so its cradle and its deathbed might as well be one and the same.

nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes. they call it spring and you know it’s coming for you, and it arrives before winter dies. it’s the shortest winter you live.




now picture this: you’re a child. flashbacks. nightmares. the name of god can trigger a panic attack.

you skip fridays at school until schools decide to make fridays and sundays weekends, and saturdays are school days stuck in the middle.

(you’re always stuck in the middle. you haven’t seen enough shades of blue but you know it’s better than all the grey.)

(every time a dog barks, you know shells will fall, and every time a bomb goes off, you know the pressure will reach you before the sound, and every explosion is followed immediately by another so the ones who rush in to help are the ones who will die next. you’re just a child, though, and you’ll always be stuck at home, being grey.)

your mother is naïve until she starts listening to you —

she’s upset you spend too much time online because she doesn’t want you to escape but only in your head.

“live with us,” she says, and you know she wants you to stay because there’s a list of names of those who left. (you envy them because your humanity is ephemeral and they’re now immortal, unlike this city and every heartbeat within its walls.)








finally, picture this: picture the loneliness of invisibility and the ache of exhaustion in your lung after you scream for hours. no one sees, and no one hears. no one cares. and sometimes, you’re too tired to care too. can you blame yourself? you’re a child. you’re a child and nations are tumbling around you like dominoes and all you can think is let the whole world burn down. sometimes you’re as naïve as your mother and all you can think is we will rise again. we always do.

picture this: you’re a child. no one cares because people like you are just meant to suffer. only people like you. the world isn’t fair. they will remember you, though, as collateral damage, and they will honour your fleeting presence on this earth by writing movies about the horrible few months their soldiers have spent in your lifeless desert before coming home with flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks triggered by the name of a god they’ll never meet, and wrinkles you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to have.

(it’s okay, you convince yourself.
you want immortality, and sometimes this means you have to die young.
deep down, you know it means you just don’t want to die at all.
and what do you know of death, anyway? you’re just a child and you can’t tell apart grey from blue.)

talk to me like we’re all alone, like you’re a non-believer and i’m a cross hanging on a hospital wall, like you’re a child in a never-ending car ride and i’m the moon that’s been following you all night, like i’m the voice in your head when it’s dark and there’s nothing you can do, like we’re drunk on the kitchen floor, like we’re sitting side by side on a park bench in the afternoon, like you can’t stop the words from spilling out of you, like you want to even if you don’t know. talk to me like you have nothing to lose, and talk to me like the world is ending and you’re about to lose.

come on, little one, listen to me,
hear me out, carefully:
we are running out of time.
soon, the sun will show its face
so be quick, be swift, tie your shoelaces,
bring your heart, wear it on your sleeve,
and sneak outside, so we can leave.
i’ll wait until the sun starts to rise,
so be quick, be swift, save your goodbyes.

come on, little one, i want to ask:
have you ever been told,
well, it’s not the end of the world
i know the answer (your thoughts count too)
so be quick, be swift, let go of the past,
bring your true self, throw away the mask,
and stay alert, for your worst fear is here,
but remember? i’m here too,
so you have nothing to fear.


come on, little one, don’t you know?
the end of the world is here.
be quiet, be patient, hear me out, carefully:
there’s no time for stupid games
like exchanging stories and names;
i will be calling you little one
and you can call me
whoever you want me to be —
a friend, hopefully?

i know, little one, i know.
i don’t know you
and you don’t know me —
but come on, little one,
how is this of any relevancy?
isn’t it enough that i’m writing you
a letter in the form of poetry —
and that, in spite of everything,
you, little one, still happen to trust me?

(is it the moles on my skin,
or the shape of my eyes?
is it that i know the thoughts in your head
better than you know them,
or that i’m good at telling you
what you know and don’t want to hear?
is it that, for once, you are not
smarter than the closest adult to you,
or is it that you simply like poetry?)


come on, little one, time is running.
but so are we,
and as long as we keep running,
time will never catch up with us
— let alone catch us —
and i promise you, little one,
we will keep running,
and we will live for eternity, we will be free,
we will do as we please, and we will be happy.

come on, little one, listen to me:
i’m by your side even when you can’t see me,
and i’m proud of every single step
you’ve taken on your own, without me,
and if you doubt my words,
or if you realise you miss me,
then do as you are told:
look in the mirror and you’ll see me,
wearing your heart on my sleeve.

come on, little one.
come on, little me.
if only, if only, if only —
you knew how far you’ll reach,
or all the places you’ll go,
or all the things you’ll get to be,
you’d have never ever shed another tear,
or wasted another night without sleep,
or wished you could just fade away or disappeared.

come on, little one.
come on, little me,
i’m proud of you,
don’t you know?
so why won’t you be
as proud of me
and love yourself
the way you fell
in love with me?

come on, little one, don’t you see?
the end of the world is here,
and you will take advantage of it,
you will adapt, you will grow,
you will change, you will see,
you will make the death of the universe
a stepping stone for you.

come on, little one.
come on, little me,
be quick, be swift,
be you, forget me,
tie your shoelaces,
bring your heart,
pull your sleeves,
listen to my voice,
and sneak outside.

and do what you want to do.
i will be watching out for you.

and if you need me,
you know how to find me.

(i don’t think you will need me.
you will be fine on your own,
because, come on, little one,
did you forget who you will be?)

to be damascene,
you cease to exist in dimashq
you start living behind the scene.
you fall in love with a mask
and an infinite faces underneath.
you learn her names without needing to ask
and you carve them onto your heart,
letter by letter, one after the other.

to be damascene,
you cease to remember what love and hate mean.
you start loving the rain and the scathing heat,
you start hating the brick walls and the old streets.
you fall in love with yasmeen
and imagine him tattooed on your skin;
little white flowers drawn in black ink,
so fragile yet so keen.

to be damascene,
you start loving from the bottom of your heart
which desires the unspeakable,
the good, the bad, the colourful, and the gray
and you start hating from the depth of your eyes,
which have seen far too much
to let you turn your head away
and act like everything is okay.

to be damascene,
you cease to love unless it’s a sin,
you let go of the songs and the notes,
and you start to sing along
with birds and bricks and bullets.
you treasure memories over lives,
and you let go of the present,
all you do is reminisce.

to be damascene,
your words cease to make sense
as you mourn the present tense,
and you worry about the jasmines
and the city you grew up praising and cursing,
but you remain painfully aware
despite all the senseless words no longer say,
and all the things you cease to be —

to be damascene
is to belong to a city unlike any other;
an immortal city with an undying soul.

and if your body falls
the way jasmines do,
and if your home falls
the way bullets do,
and if your world falls
the way lovers do,

she will still be there:

a new world will rise
and she will be there still,
right in the center.
she will have a new name
but her children will rarely use it.
she will live a new chapter
and her children will be writing it.

to be damascene, is to believe in it.

his name is gabriel. he has the greenest eyes
i’ve ever seen, the softest hair i’ve ever touched,
and a voice that, in a world where we’re gods,
can awaken wilting flowers and move the skies.

and i’m always listening to gabriel’s voice;
at first, it’s back in our local highschool,
where miss razan silences us and asks us
to close our eyes so we can listen to gabriel’s soul.

time passes and we’re grown ups,
local boys turned men,
secret lovers hanging onto an edge.
and i still hear his soul.

in sunday mornings, before the choir arrives,
we meet at church, he sits on my piano,
sings about heaven and god, while i press the keys
and lean up to kiss his lips when a note goes wrong.

right next door is the nightclub we work in,
i pour drinks, and gabriel sings of worshipping
a better god. angry drunks call it blasphemy,
but i believe that he is just loving me.

i wake up to his green eyes, bed hair, his family,
prayers under his roof, love over the roof;
things are getting worse at my house,
and i hope my stay here is temporary.

and it is, because his mother kicks me out
the day we hear the news. gabriel isn’t alive;
angry that he sings of worshipping a different god,
they force him to meet their own god in the skies.

time passes and he doesn’t grow,
local boy forever young,
a widow without a proof of love,
but i still hear his soul.

i get lost in the streets of beirut,
finding myself seeking every corner
his laughter and words and lyrics once lived in,
but i never hear his voice again.

only his soul.

i don't know what happens to me
but i know that people sing his songs
and his soul lives on and on,
and they forget the real story —

leaving both of gabriel and me in a dusty alley
between the church and nightclub we fell in love in.)

welcome to my city,
in which fog spreads melancholy
and rain is restless yet lazy.
angels and demons live side by side,
on the edge of a sharp knife.
peace exists under the sun
so nighttime is wartime
but beware; for shady alleys at any time
are battle grounds full of mines.

(i asked a flower and
she swore on all the little mistakes in my city
that it was angels who planted those mines.)

welcome to my city,
in which some boys are too ugly
with their dusty faces and grey knives,
and some girls can't be pretty,
with their black knees and shallow eyes.
in which some boys are too pretty.
with their nice clothes and dead souls,
and some girls can't be ugly,
with their shiny hair and million rules.

(i asked a little mistake
and he swore to me on all living souls in my city
that he shall never become ugly or pretty.)

welcome to my city,
in which flowers bloom in trashcans
the way the moon does amongst the fog,
and green plants grow in the corners
the way little breathing mistakes do,
but the plants turn out to be poisonous,
and the mistakes are hopeless children
with broken hearts; they're dangerous,
with an excessive sense of fearlessness.

(i asked an ugly girl
and she swore to me on all the restless droplets of rain
that half of those mistakes will always be afraid.)

welcome to my city,
in which you can find:
children and flowers in trashcans,
angels and demons in a constant fight,
setting up mines in shady alleys
where the ugly boys and pretty boys lurk,
waiting patiently for the moon to shine,
and for girls who are neither ugly nor pretty to show,
and for the melancholic fog to settle down.

(welcome to my city,
in which we all have been waiting for you.
i asked an angel and a demon
and they both swore to me on all the humans in my city
that you're a god.
and gods. don't. cry.
you're our saviour.
we can start off by removing the mines,
and making sure that the sun remains alight.)

—

‪no matter how hard it gets‬
‪to spend your teen years in closets,‬
‪remember that it's worth it.‬
‪stay strong and fight to stay alive‬
‪because, sometime, in the future,‬
‪a child would sleep with a smile,‬
‪knowing they are special to‬
‪have someone as accepting,‬
‪strong and brave as you‬
‪as the person they look up to.‬

someday i will shine as bright
as the moon does in spite
of all the men and wolves howling
at her throughout the night.

someday i will shine as bright
as the moon does in spite
of all the men and wolves howling
at her throughout the night.

their hearts bleed for us while bleeding us dry;
yet they turn their heads to the other side
when our blood is spilled on ***** sidewalks late at night,
when the sun’s on the other side of the world,
when justice is asleep
and the facts are on their side in courts
which our blood, which our loved,
are too poor, bled dry and white,
to keep up with,
or to speak up about the jury’s prejudice.

their hearts bleed for us while they watch us bleed to death
from the wounds they’ve inflected upon our bodies;
yet they turn their eyes towards the sky
and act like they’re blind and scream,
“we all bleed red,”
as if we don’t know that,
as if we haven’t seen our own blood on the sidewalks,
as if they have seen their own blood spilled before,
as if their fake sympathy isn’t a side of the metallic,
copper-tasting irony.

( but our wounds will heal and we will rise;
we won’t bleed again but when we inevitably do,
our blood won’t be red — it’ll be golden and holy,
and our stories, and our bodies,
they won’t be pushed aside.
our martyrs will light up the night sky,
for they are stars and their names will immortalised.
for we are gods and gods don’t bleed nor cry. )

darling, you’re a beautiful mess,
and it’s such a shame
that your
hatred for yourself
is deeper than my love for you.

take my hand
&
close your eyes
&
follow me;

the journey
is something
you wouldn’t
want to see,

but

we’re destined
to follow
destiny;
be where we’re
meant to be.

so

hold on tight
&
smile once more
&
just trust me.