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!

*

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. 

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