tell me we'll never get used to it.

Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic: Poems; "A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck"

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

Now the kitchen is empty and I am alone at the dinner table. Grief is the only thing in front of me. I am not ready. I wish you had of asked me if I was ready.

I am alone at this table and I am not ready. Patience is not his virtue and grief is setting the table but I am not ready to say goodbye. I wish you had waited till I was ready.

And in a whisper, I hear my father say ‘but here it is, in front of you. Grief does not wait for dinner to be served before it takes a seat at the table.’

"The birds sang in the wet trees / And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now / And I was dead and someone else was listening to them. / But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy."