Poetry in flames

The open hand A.R.ABDULLAH There was a hunger carved beneath the bone, a hollow voice that never spoke alone, it wore the past like bruises dressed in gold, it bit the heart and called the breaking “old”— old as the silence stitched into a scream, old as the death of every childhood dream. And God—the fury—how it begged to rise, to flood the throat, to sharpen in the eyes, to spit the hurt back harder than it came, to set the world alight and call it “name”— to finally make the pain belong somewhere, to tear it loose and force it into air. But in the wreck, beneath the urge to burn, there lived a softer, more unbearable turn: not rage—not teeth—not fire split apart— but something far more brutal—an open heart. A hand that did not strike when it was torn, a voice that did not curse the way it mourned, a soul that, shaking, chose not to become the very blade it had been bleeding from. What kind of strength is this?—to not attack, to feel the knife and never hand it back, to cradle grief like something small and wild, and speak to it the way one soothes a child? The tears came thick—like rain that rots the ground, each drop a memory that would not drown, they tasted like the names that went unsaid, like all the love that starved and stayed for dead— and still, the mouth refused to twist in spite, it broke—but would not sharpen into bite. There was a room still living in the chest, where every younger self had come to rest, with trembling hands and eyes that learned too soon how love can vanish like a borrowed moon— and there, instead of anger, something grew: a grief so deep it taught the heart what’s true. That pain is not a weapon to return, not every wound is meant to make you burn, that breaking does not need to justify becoming all the things that made you cry. So kindness came—not soft—but fierce and wide, like oceans learning how to hold the tide, like choosing, in the middle of the ache, to not become the harm you could remake. And oh—it hurts—God, how it always will, a quiet ache no silence ever kills— but in that ache, a strange and sacred art: to hold the knife… and never lose the heart.

Marrow and Moth A.R.ABDULLAH The milk-teeth of the morning bite the hem of the sheet, I am the bruise and the fruit and the bitter and sweet. There’s a knot in my throat where the wood used to be, Before the forest forgot how to look at the tree. I am the sink-water circling the drain, The animal logic of living through pain. ​The self is a house with the windows blown thin, Letting the outside come rattling in. I am the jaw of the mountain, the dust of the shelf, I am the ghost of the life that I promised myself. It’s a copper-wire humming, a low-bellied ache, The ice on the river just waiting to break. ​I’ve been the moth in the sweater, the rust on the nail, The kite that is begging the wind for a tail. My skin is a letter that no one has read, Written in blue on the backs of the dead. Is this the connection? The blood and the dirt? The way that the healing is shaped like the hurt? ​The life is a predator, patient and kind, It eats all the shadows we leave here behind. It’s the wet of the moss and the grey of the stone, The feeling of being entirely alone In a body that breathes without asking me why, Under the weight of a heavy-set sky. ​So lay me down soft in the tall, yellow grass, And watch all the versions of 'me' as they pass. I’m the oil in the engine, the salt in the tear, The silence that grows at the end of the year. It’s a violent mercy, it’s raw and it’s deep, To wake up and find you have nothing to keep. ​I am the echo, the iron, the vine, Where the life and the self start to blur and entwine. I’m a mouth full of clover, a chest full of tin, Letting the great, wide nothingness in. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Losing the war? And finding in Reality there was none before, it was just you, fighting your own shore.

صار هواي ما مسولفين

شلونهم

The pulse A.R.ABDULLAH a spark slept in the marrow before the bones learned their names before the mouth shaped sorrow or the sky invented rain it lived in the quiet between breaths in the hum beneath the skin a trembling, unfinished sentence trying to begin and oh— how it ached to be spoken how it clawed at the ribs like light through a door left open just enough for the night you are not empty— you are crowded with storms with hands that have not yet touched the shape of their forms you are a fever of colors unspilled, unnamed a wildfire waiting for something unafraid to burn— to ruin the stillness you hide in to break the glass of “enough” to let the wildness slide in because creation is not gentle it is teeth, it is birth it is the scream of a canvas as it swallows the earth it is love with no language it is loss with no end it is building a world just to break it again and still— still the hands keep reaching through doubt, through the blur through the ache of not being what you thought you were still the heart keeps singing in a voice cracked and true “there is something inside you that only you can do” so let it be ugly let it be wrong let it tremble and stutter its way into song let it bleed through your fingers let it ruin your name let it carve something holy out of ordinary pain because even the stars had to tear through the dark just to prove there was light in the mark and you— you are no different you are made of that fight of breaking, of becoming of turning to light so create— not to be perfect not to be known but to answer the pulse that has always been home.

bone orchard hymn A.R.ABDULLAH the mouth filled with rust and morning tongue like a splintered key turning in locks that remember what the body refused to be a spine made of borrowed weather each vertebra humming low with ghosts of unspoken thunder and seeds that forgot to grow the mirror swallowed its witness no face, just a trembling frame a silhouette stitched from absence wearing the echo of name and something beneath the ribcage— not heart, but a flickering hive where all of the unlived lifetimes are clawing and begging to thrive skin like a field after wildfire blackened, but breathing heat roots drinking ash like a gospel learning the language of defeat what is a self but a question nailed to the wind, undone? a fracture rehearsing its wholeness a night misremembering sun the hands kept digging for meaning through marrow, through memory, through mud unearthing a terrible clarity: everything holy is blood and still— in the ruin, a rhythm a pulse in the fractured loam where something without a name yet is quietly building a home not light, not dark, but a crossing a threshold that cannot stay where breaking becomes a becoming and silence gives birth to a say the body unlearns its borders the ache becomes strangely sweet as if every wound is a doorway and every collapse, a heartbeat.

A war laid down inside the heart A.R.ABDULLAH Is peace a shore we’re sailing to, or something born in breaking through? A quiet field beyond the fight, or something forged inside the night? I chased it like a distant hymn, a ghost that sang on edges dim, in every door I couldn’t keep, in every wound that wouldn’t sleep. I begged the sky to make me whole, to wash the ruin from my soul, but silence answered like a blade: “You are the war you’re asking to fade.” So I knelt down in my own unrest, felt every tremor in my chest, let every shattered part be known, and called that aching place my home. And there—beneath the fear and flame, beneath the guilt, beneath the shame— a softer voice began to rise, not from the world, but from inside: “Peace isn’t waiting at the end, it isn’t something you defend. It’s what you build with trembling hands, it’s how you choose to understand.” It’s in the cracks you dare to stay, when every instinct screams to run away, it’s in forgiving what you’ve been, and letting mercy enter in. Not clean, not pure, not free of cost, but stitched together where you’re lost, a fragile truth, a quiet art— a war laid down inside the heart. So is it something we must seek? Or something born when we are weak? It’s both—the road, the wound, the start… But mostly, it’s a work of heart.

the animal Inside A.R.ABDULLAH there is a mouth in me that never learned to close— it hums in low, unholy prose, it gnaws on ghosts, it overgrows the ribs i built to house it. i fed it dusk, i fed it dread, i laid my quiet in its bed, i let it drink the things i said i’d never speak aloud. it howled in me— a crooked choir, a flooded wire, a throat of thorns, a borrowed fire— and still… i called it mine. i walked into a field of glass, barefoot, begging it to pass, each step a soft, recurring mass of breaking into skin— and something in the shards would sing, a silver, severed, tender thing: to grow is just to keep becoming what you’ve already been. the wind was thin, the sky was bruised, the earth a pulse i couldn’t use, i stood there split and half-refused— yet still… i did not leave. there is a stillness shaped like teeth, it waits for you beneath beneath, it doesn’t roar, it doesn’t seethe— it simply doesn’t move. it is the deer that does not run, the setting of a second sun, the echo after you are done proving what you prove. i feared it more than all my pain— the quiet like a falling plane, no fire, no ash, no cry, no rain— just air that would not break. i buried versions of myself like winter jars on splintered shelves, labeled them for someone else to maybe understand— this one cried blood, this one was kind, this one was always left behind, this one would beg, this one would bind its heart with trembling hands— but none of them would stay with me when stillness came so suddenly, so vast, so bare, so violently invisible and wide— i had no noise to run inside. peace is an animal with ribs you count at night with shaking fingertips, it does not purr, it does not kiss, it barely lets you near it— it watches you with yellow eyes, it does not comfort, does not lie, it waits for you to stop the fight so it can disappear. but if you soften—just a bit, if you don’t reach, if you don’t flinch, it might lay down, it might admit that you are not its prey. — so i stayed— with the mouth, with the field, with the glass, with the echo that would not pass, with the past like a breathing mass curled quiet in my chest— i stayed when every bone said run, i stayed when i came undone, i stayed when staying felt like none of this would ever rest— and slowly, like a thread unspun, like night forgiving what it’s done, like something ending, just begun— the noise began to thin. now i am less a storm, more seam, a quiet stitch in something seen, a fractured, flickering in-between of what i was and am— the animal no longer loud, the field no longer fully bowed, the glass that sings but not so proud— the stillness in the flame. — and if you listen— close enough, through all the tender, aching rough— you’ll hear it breathe, that fragile stuff: a life that did not flee. a peace that did not come or go— but waited, patient, far below, for you to finally be still enough to be.

Stillness of happiness A.R.ABDULLAH There is a quiet after breaking, after the ribs of the storm give way— when the sky stops shouting its sorrow and the earth relearns how to stay. I once believed joy was lightning, a violent and golden release— but happiness came like a slow open field where the wind finally chooses its peace. Stillness. Stillness in the marrow and bone. Stillness like a wounded orchard learning how to grow alone. Because love came sharp as winter, it opened the skin of my days— every promise a delicate fracture every memory setting a blaze. I have carried the weight of departures, felt whole constellations collapse— watched the hands that once held my breathing slowly loosen their maps. Stillness. Stillness under everything lost. Where the roots of the soul keep drinking from the wells of invisible cost. I have knelt in the dark of becoming, where the past like a river runs deep— where the ghosts of my younger sorrows sit beside me in silence and weep. But pain is a patient gardener, it buries its lessons in clay— and the seeds of a gentler living break their bones just to reach the day. Stillness. Stillness in the heart’s deep ground. Where the slowest kinds of healing make the smallest sacred sound. So the grief became soil beneath me, and the love that I thought had died rose again through the cracks of my living like a tide I could no longer hide. Not loud. Not bright like a conquering flame— but quiet as snow on a meadow that remembers every name. And happiness— not thunder or fire— just breath returning to a tired chest. Just light resting gently where the storms once pressed. Just the fragile mercy of living becoming rest.