The sky was dark but filled with specks of light, the mountains towered over everything but there were people on them, the air was dry and stale and ready for rain, disparity plagued the town but hope survived inside their rib cages.

Throbbing hands

The mind's a void, Devoid

Kashem stands outside his small, two-bedroom tin-shed house. The summer heat has warmed up the air, creating a vacuum.

The first cup of coffee we had after our pointless agreement tasted like our outlived relationship, bitter and cold. She looked livelier though,

Everything real...

Dreams, the foolish thoughts of humans.

The sky was bare and Ari was disappointed. She had expected stars, but there was nothing but an endless void of black.

I was born on a calm afternoon in August. My mom says I didn't cry at first and she thought I might've been dead, until the doctor smacked my bottom.

I still remember our first conversation;

Harun walked into the office space while pulling up his trousers above his hips even though he had a belt.

The train arrived late than the scheduled time, almost two hours late. My head was involuntarily swirling. I was half-asleep-half-awake, I regained conscious thought as I was hit on the head by the bulgy swinging purse of a cranky middle-aged woman.

At 70, I stare at the face that aged so well. The subtle smile through her rosy lips. The hue of her lipstick faded with her youth, it's only the pastel pink burnishes these days. She's entertaining guests effortlessly. Somewhere along her reminiscing the golden days and moving her hands all about, relics of her former-party-girl-self flicker every now and then, even at 70.

Mary stepped out of her house as the blinding Sun shone on her face. “Forgot my shades, again” she mutters to herself. Regardless, she treads along the pavement, barely hiding her eyes from the rays.

Approaching his seventeenth birthday the boy known as Rubaiyat Karim committed an act that made him infamous. July 19, 2009. On that day the man known as Rubaiyat Karim was conceived.

He kept tossing his thoughts to the other side of the wall. No matter how many times he kept hurling them, those careened back to him.

A whale in a jar, A spectacle at war

The sky beyond the sky, Holding mystery, cried;

All you could hear was the whimper

I found a little beauty in the silent awakening