Human Sacrifice

The soil has yet to be evened out. 

The patch still stands darker than the rest, 

freshly dug and new. 

 

It stands out, 

even if there is nothing else 

yet indicative of its sheer power 

in rendering families broken. 

 

Miles away a slab of marble or stone has been selected. 

It will be carved without emotions, 

engraved with words 

that mean nothing to the maker 

but has been spoken 

through the wet gasping 

among a thousand tears. 

 

Miles away more soil is being dug. 

It is empty, waiting and hungry. 

This time, there are no painful words. 

Only one mourns 

while the rest stand waiting, 

jaws unhinged with spite and fire; 

aiming arrows tinged with liquid anguish 

at a wounded animal. 

 

It hits its mark with absolute accuracy 

honed only by years of attack. 

Its poison spreads effectively. 

It isolates, traps and drags its victim from its blood. 

It manipulates, controls and destroys. 

It steals and carves out a hole, felt only by a select few. 

But is it really stealing when the victim is only too happy to give? 

 

Too happy to rip apart branches to make way for the vines.  

The afterthought, the ignored and the long forgotten. 

 

No headstone this time.

Just four pulsing hearts, 

Beating its finals pumps 

Before they realise that 

the farmer is never

coming back home. 

The sheep have been sacrificed 

for the wolves. 

 

Two men good. Four girls bad.

The Role I Have To Play

Who I am is what you want. 

Angle me so that the light illuminates what you have chosen,
the darkness hides what you have forsaken.
Stretch me thin to curve into your smile,
wring me off your tears after
You have scrubbed me off.

Point me to the lenses,
Push me to the frames
So that the cuts and the bruises
Don’t look the same. 

I am what you want me to be
But only sometimes.

I have to be
what you don’t want me to be
So that you may shine the spotlight
Spin me around to display the fight

To model me into your own
Monster ; Creature
So that your heroic deeds
you can feature. 

Time stands only still
When you command it so
But does time resuscitate
What you kill?

Dust it with glitter
Bury the bones.
Things have gone bitter

I’ll disconnect the phones.

Hope

 

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Dear future me,

I hope you remember this feeling.

I hope you remember that you promised

to let go.

 

I hope you’r trunk has split into 2,

new roots grow, old shoots few.

 

I hope you’ve learnt to turn to,

not from, the sun. To want more. 

I hope you are closed, 

I hope the veins are now blue. 

 

I hope that you are only one, 

not three, 

not five. 

I hope you’ve learnt to 

keep those who water you 

( those who keep you alive).  

 

I hope you keep living 

for the givers and the needed. 

 

I hope you have hopes, not just fantasies.  

I hope you’re no longer 

pushing away realities. 

I hope I hope, even thought I should know better.

I hope that one day, I’ll get better. 

 

Better at helping,

better at protecting, 

better at choosing. 

 

I hope one day, the well is dried.

 I hope the oceans have found a place to hide.  

Dear future me, I hope you’re there.

No longer weary, no longer bare. 

Extraction

It turns out its better to let go than to hold onto things so tightly like a vice only to realise that suffocation and protection are one and the same.  Youth brings nothing but pain and dreams crash and burn before taking off.  You look inside and all you see is hollow, halo, hello, goodbye. The steel blade glints menacingly, a promise, both broken and anticipating. Papers crushed, mind emptied. Giving up can mean liberation, or it can mean the haunting begins a new. You wash your hands, scrubbed raw. The ink stains but it’s fading away. Angry red lines paint the inside of your palms throbbing from the ghost of the weight. Swelling, rising, missing but also ready to heal.  But will it ever? The blade comes back, often enough. Its time to sharpen and slice it way. You did it all wrong, they’re making you pay. Now you’re on the outside, but do you want in? Or would you never look back,wipe it all clean. But it doesn’t matter, the past is tainted. Your smile is gone, for so long it never existed.

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// No more beginnings, only endings. Some last forever, some are gone the quickest.//

RE:moval

 

Cut the cord.
Pluck the feather.
Break off the branch,
That dies in good weather.

The third Oreo
Crushed at the bottom.
The three power puff girls,
Two forgotten.

Take the pill.
Amputate the arm.
Boil the water.
Filter and strain.

But does the heart pump the same?

The flesh is burnt off.
The bones are broken.
The blood has stopped flowing.
Phantom pains, ghostly encounters.

One clean break.

I’m sorry.

By Farahna Alam

This time it’s different,
you won’t cross the line.
This time you tell yourself
She will be fine.

A crack. A slip. You can’t go back
Gave up, caved in. You turned your back
A year, a month,  or just a second;
Could change a have into a haven’t

A year, a month,  or just a second;
The clean white slate has now been blackened.
Next time, not now, the next and next.
Too late, she’s gone, it can’t be fixed.

And then you say
“The fault is mine.”
While u drifted away,
She wasn’t fine.

She cried. She screamed, and cried some more.
But the monsters were there, hidden in her core.
She smiled, she lied, she pushed them away.
They tried to help,  she threw it away.

This time it’s different,
you didn’t cross the line.
You tried your best,
But she still wasn’t fine.

Beauty

When I was twelve and you were five, you came into my room one night just to ask me what beautiful looked like. There were other questions,  easier questions, that I answered before but the definition of beauty?  I couldn’t find the words to explain it right. So then I started listing things, hoping you’d get the drift. Our mother, our father, the neighbour next door, the woman on the television, your favourite doll. The sun looking smaller from our treetop house, where you hid almost every day so you didn’t have to play with the other boys. The colour of melted ice cream on our counter top, pink from mine, and blue from yours, mixing in the middle to create a secret galaxy. I wished I could’ve hidden you there the day you came home with a broken nose. Kids will be mean, kids will be cruel. But the worst of all was Dad’s cold shoulder when you couldn’t catch a ball. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I told you beauty was in yours. Because even though the world hated your skirts and your strange little quirks, you took that pain and pushed it down. I knew Mum hated that you couldn’t fit in, and Dad just didn’t get why you did what you did. I wished all those years before the fights and lonely lunches, I had just told you back then, that even though you weren’t happy with the way you looked and even though you had blue ice cream when you always eyed mine, you were still beautiful every time you smiled.

Abyss

By Farahna

Somedays I find myself
embracing the ground,
pressing myself into it
just to escape the frighteningly
unending abyss above us,
and some nights I’m reaching out
with fingertips stretching up
to claw against the sky and
steal the stars just to bring
some light to the abyss
around us.

Silence

 

By Farahna Alam

Is it supposed to feel this way?
Going to bed in my coffin
a weight in my chest, just pressing
like I’m buried alive, in decay.

To have words trapped behind
the bars of your teeth; silent.
Strangling your voice; so violent.
All while attacking you blind.

First, the air starts burning

the soil underneath like clay

My arms pinned down. Listening.

Finally. I’m buried alive, in decay.

Fight

By Farahna Alam

Just when I thought
I was ready for a fight
They changed the lock
And closed it tight.
When they say u hit rock bottom
It’s all really a lie,
The ground just caves in
There’s no end to the fight.