by Hibah Shabkhez
Born too late to be children of the spring
Lost too early for the grave of the fall
You fly.
Grateful still that your abyss-bearing thing
Is paltry, unbombed, unburnt, one-foot tall
You lie.
So crave fried eggs and gnaw at stalks beside
Your feet guilt-chained to an exam-clock fate
And cry.
Stumble down your mole hill, curl up inside
The oozing core of a dark chocolate
And die.
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in The Mojave Heart Review, Third Wednesday, Brine, Petrichor, Remembered Arts, Rigorous, and elsewhere.
