After a short conversation on the James Webb Space Telescope photos of the universe
Fatima Hanan El Reda
Death is a cosmic dance
blinding
neon grief
loss
bathed in starlight.
Light falls from your eyes
a thousand years of mourning
and a handful of stars
scattered across the grave of what could’ve been.
We’re so used to death being ugly
flesh decays, bones crack
soul disintegrates into a million questions
the heart starved
a whole universe interred
and then, darkness.
And the truth—
not the deepest sharpest truth,
but a truth nonetheless—
is that we could not believe a dying star could be so beautiful
because no one has come back from death
to tell us about the lights—
oh, the lights!
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Fatima Hanan El Reda has an MA in English Language and Literature from the Lebanese University and a BA in journalism. A lover of words and literature, she writes poetry and the occasional short story. She lives in Dubai, but her heart is in Beirut.