Victim Projects

by Abed   Dec 7, 2018


It is Saturday 3:30 a.m.
I think I have thrown up enough,
and nothing's left in my stomach
'cept a wish:

If I hadn't bought a double bed,
I wouldn't have felt the need for company.

"Are you there?," my friend texts.
"Yes," reply my fingertips,
yet my soul is elsewhere far:

Loud music, bright city lights,
the tickles, the urge to drink and shout,
"Beirut, there's no shame in becoming
a one-night project, there's no shame
in dancing with victims."

I tell my friends I love them.
We laugh, but our laughs dissolve in the distance.
If death is the nonexistence of pain,
perhaps you can tell him his glass is on me.
But I'm not sure whether he could pass through;
the place is studded, and I am not alone.
It is practically impossible that I'd be alone.

It is Saturday 3:30 a.m.
And on each Saturday, I don't think
I have thrown up enough.

8


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Latest Comments

  • 5 years ago

    by DarkNDangerous

    Just breathtaking.

  • 5 years ago

    by Ya----Na

    We are victims of this huge project called life, aren't we?
    Comfort has a price, but not happiness.

  • 5 years ago

    by Poet on the Piano

    Abed, I've missed your poetry and you being on here. This is absolutely heart-wrenching but your voice is so clear and unmistakable. I felt such a heavy atmosphere reading this. A sense of mourning. As always, your poems are intimate in that they express a pain many of us may relate to, but never truly know. That distance is so personal and can be incredibly hard to understand how to live with or without others, acknowledging the absence and that sense of yearning.

  • 5 years ago

    by nourayasmine

    "I tell my friends I love them.
    We laugh, but our laughs dissolve in the distance."
    Heartbreaking, true and just sad. I have many friends who left Syria, and we text almost everyday, and we try to feel that our friendship is still as it used to be, but it's never the same. Distance is the worst thing that could happen to any relationship. Good to see you writing again, my friend.

  • 5 years ago

    by Maple Tree

    Im speechless...................WOW

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