Asteria

Almost everyone

from the modern age

spiralling back

thousands of years

to our earliest ancestors

has looked up and witnessed

the same starry sky.

Fashion trends come and go.

A kaleidoscope of nations

and empires rise and fall.

The landscape itself

breaks apart and reforms under

the same starry sky.

Now our city lights

drown out the stars.

We forget that they are there,

and will be there

long after we are gone.

We delude ourselves

that we are immortal.

On a clear night,

far from the neon signs

and empty lives,

a single glance up

and you will see

the endless echo of eternity.

The map of of all possibility.

Beauty, dread, wonder, awe

and so much more.

All within

the same starry sky.

Gap

I met a guy on the tube

from Oxford Circus to Victoria.

Obviously Muslim.

So I greeted him

the way we do.

He smiled and greeted me,

then made some remark about the summer heat.

I politely laughed and agreed.

Before getting off at his stop

he offered me some of his perfume.

I applied some and thanked him.

As he left he looked at me

and said: 'May God reward you.'

Then he was gone.

I didn't get his name, his face already a blur,

but I thought of him for the rest of the day.

It felt like a fleeting encounter with a real human

after a thousand years stuck at sea.

The sea of zombies and apathy.

Of quiet, mindless insanity.

It's like time paused and he gave me a wink

that said: 'I know this is all a dream,

and I know that we're both awake.

Hang in there'.

Recalling this later make me choke,

and I excused myself to cry alone.

Washing away the confused tears, I wondered

why I was so affected.

Why did I feel the need

to pray for this stranger?

And that's when I realised.

It's because he is a stranger

and so am I.

We're both strangers in this world.

That moment, between two stations,

is where we crossed paths

on our journey to eternity.

It won't be long

from that day until we meet again,

God-willing.

So mind the gap.

Saudade

There’s no word for the feeling

of nostalgia for a place you’ve

never lived in or seen.

The dictionary fails to label

my intense longing for elsewhere.

My muted cries for someone

to take me away from this alien world

they tell me is my home.

How can one know they don’t belong here,

if belonging here is all they’ve known?

My mind tells me I must be mistaken,

while my heart knows something is wrong.

With all these people around me, am I the imposter,

or the only real boy amongst the wooden crowd?