Haya Khalaf is a writer and Year-2 student at BHSEC Cleveland.
Within You, Within Me: A Poem in Response to COVID-19
We watch
How the earth begins to cleanse itself
Clear waters
And lucid skies
Forcing us to surround ourselves within four white walls
To contemplate and reevaluate
How selfish we have been all these years
To now understand how it’s like for fathers in Gaza to provide when restrictions are applied
Or for mothers in Africa who are afraid their kids won’t survive
A glimpse of what could soon be our lives
If we open our third eye
We see money and power are the underlie
Of all the hidden pain and suffering
This country was assembled by
When will we understand
When will we see
The true power lies within you and me
A lesson for the youth and the elderly
Greed will never be fed even with all the necessities
Unity and love is all we truly need
To fight the disease that’s been living long within you and me
Deepest Roots
My favorite aspect about winter is not the deceptive snowflakes that vigorously fall with power yet instantly melt on the rough ground surface.
It is in fact, the rooted tree that is completely stripped of it’s beautiful nature
yet still holds on to its deepest roots
in hopes of a time where it can bloom into its true colors.
Heart and Mind: A Married Couple
How upsetting it is to be at war with yourself
to know exactly what you desire
Yet designate your own hands into suffocating your voice
I often drift in my own imagination of a time where my heart and mind coexist lucidly
It is then I’m reminded; I am split in two.
And begin to grasp what it means to be of opposite natures and In love.
I am an artwork
for the world should look no further than themselves to know a love story
Poem in Response to Sylvia Path’s The Bell Jar
My body is confined into a container filled with restrictions I have no means to obey.
My brain, however, has far gone escaped
It often takes me places
I am at peace with
Only to remind my body that it lacks
The wonderful tenderness of freedom.
