Poetry

Loneliness: A Mental Indisposition

by

Laala Alghata

Loneliness is not some chosen path
but an obsession maintained carefully,
analogous to mental disease,
the mental indisposition to let oneself
be loved or feel at ease. Loneliness
bites, it severs our sentiment
and leaves us with poetry in our veins.

Loneliness is not a shelter, it does
not give refuge from the storm.
It is bland, colourless and blind
until spliced open, when it chokes
on the metaphors bubbling underneath.

Together

by

Laala Alghata

We will dance under streetlights,
begging for Hope, undressing
in our rooms at night with anger,
pinching our thighs, pursing
our lips, hating our stomachs.

We will drive all night to watch
a sunrise on a lake, drive all day
to see a once-in-a-lifetime
occurrence somewhere among
the stars. We will fight
to keep our eyes open.

We will stroll down an Autumn road,
listening to the leaves crunch underneath
our feet and breathing in the chill
that will begin to creep into the air.

We will destroy ourselves,
portray our lives as we want them
to be seen, burn truths and notes,
decorate our lovely lies.

We will destroy our memory,
distort facts, our gravestones
will be blank. No one pleading
for us to rest in peace.