The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 11 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Resist

You have made ice out of my heart;/ we were once nothing–you brutalise me

Words were never my greatest strength/ But the arsonist's child will read them

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 8 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Flick

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 2 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Rescue

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 1 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Ignite.

How do I tell her, that things often don't work out the way you expect them to, / And that you are, in fact, alone in this

I've lived as her; / I've known my mother’s plight.

Years later, when I would no longer live in my parents' room and grow to have my own,/ I would disregard all the hours I had spent by the window staring at beetles hiding.

We will chase after stringless kites, Down the road

I heard myself speak today It made me want to Cut out my tongue.

But I bloom like a flower:/ Soft and strong.

Autumn transcended Winter– / Crispness in the air fell pale.

rise, rise—now evening dies: sun-born in valleys with burning olive trees—where  women like me plod one day at a time,

For once, can love look like a Sunday morning; filled with warmth, calmness and motionless?

wounded limbs heal faster, / than a wounded conscience

What happens when your desire Lies in being alive?

Lacerating the unfortified,/ Picking at the flesh for bad blood to find

Bury your feet where its green And when the air is thin you will see 

She’s as real as my meandering/ As tangible as tinkering.