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Flickering Ember
How did the sea become a crime?
How did its blue become a bruise on the face of history?
How did the verdure turn into red wrath,
breathing fire into burned hearts,
leaving behind it a black, frosty funeral?
How did the tree become a Fury?
Her strands of fire
strewn above the dew and tranquil mounts
Furious fire and melted iron
Lava and blood-red ink
Pumping out of the wounded bosom of the earth
Bubbling up like the foam of death
To carve an unprecedented story;
A story of a dying profound pain, reborn
In the same womb, at the same moment
Growing as rapidly as the pulsating heart of a child in terror
Lost in the land of infinite wars.
***
My land, a flickering ember
Once giving light and warmth;
The other, singeing our hearts;
Do you choose to be a beacon in the dark,
or to blow up in our faces like a blind flame of wrath?
Are you destined to turn into ash
disarrayed by the wind?
***
People might claim that the earth is not for all
But the heavens are inevitably for all
The living, the dead, the imprisoned
Happy, grieving, immersed in prayer,
For the heavens are in the hands of God the just
Never to be touched by human slaves
Copyright ©
Zainab Wasel Ali
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