Yesterday’s news was forgotten by morning
as if the world refreshes its memory
overnight. But this time the past latches on to
the blossom stench along the path by the park
where drug dealers meet at night to smoke
and I wonder, who hides in the dark
but those most afraid of the darkness within,
who sleeps in the cold but those who can’t suffer
the coldness of others. The clouds shuffle
as the sky swells to tell the same
story again, an old man to his children:
however it is lived, life will be scattered like the stars, but
even in death, projected across the universe.
Nashwa Gowanlock is an Egyptian writer, journalist and literary translator based in the UK. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.