They Were My Loved Ones
I am a stranger amongst you.
The war has eaten most of my loved ones,
and fear has exiled the rest.
Because I am lonely, I have mysterious hobbies.
I now fish in the busses for the employed single ladies,
I sit next to one of them and pretend to be profoundly reading.
Suddenly, I whisper, thank God she is not wearing a ring.
Her smile, then, fills the bus.
Lots of men asked for my hand,
but no one was as literate as you are.
I am a poet and single whose hunger made him helpless.
Her disappointment fills the bus,
she gets closer to the window after she was closer to me,
she mumbles: my single friends are right about questioning:
Where are single men?
Then, I cry, the war has eaten most of my loved ones,
and fear has exiled the rest.
IMAD KADHUM ABDULLA graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering but wrestled with a conflict between literature and science until poetry found him. He is a recipient of the Creativity Award in Iraq and has received numerous other awards in the theater. Additionally, he was honored with the Arabic Oscar award for the movie “Calm Souls.”
FATIMAH ABDULRIDHA is a medical translator, clinical scribe, public health graduate, and pre-med student who finds joy in literature. Her love for fiction inspired her to begin writing short stories in her native language, Arabic. Recently, she has expanded her creative work to write prose in English. She translates carefully chosen poems that captivate her, believing they will also intrigue her readers.
