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    Home»Creative

    A collection of poetry from Women’s Honi

    Read the poetry featured in this year's Women's Honi.
    By Laura de Feyter, Claire Ollivain and Raz BadiyanNovember 22, 2019 Creative 3 Mins Read
    Art by Ranuka Tandan.
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    Portrait of a Daydream
    by Laura de Feyter

    I wonder how it feels
    To exist constantly in the shadowy painting of reality
    To know only workload, work stress, heart ache –
    (the primary hues of the every day)

    I try to untangle the strings
    tethering me to the colourful release
    lights flashing inside my mind
    in the land where I am still queen
    Where there need be no king, and I rule with dreams –

    And bring myself
    back down
    To the misted illustration hovering outside my head
    Where I am still the citizen of a stolen country
    Where reality is still there every timeI wake.

    Sometimes my mind flickers and folds in between the layers
    and my feet falter, unsure of which colour terrain
    they dare to believe.

    the strings tangle themselves, too close
    To separate with flawed fingers
    And I choke
    Trying to bite off the knots with my teeth.
    They are wrapped around my neck now, pulling me in
    Till reality grows dim

    My eyes are entranced as
    The artworks plait themselves together in a cacophony of colours
    Dancing to a lullaby which dulls the creeping ache
    and breathes the blackness of primary colours away,
    till my kingdom is a distant memory
    where the tide flows backwards, and the
    sea is painted too high
    for me to swim in it.

    Now, I choose the sand.

    Still, it seems -I will always be a painter
    in the artwork of dreams.

    Iced Tea
    by Raz Badiyan (@rbwords)

    Nothing screams ‘yearning’ like a half finished cup of tea
      left for the morning.
    Staring at curtains and blank walls until it got cold.
    Too cold to drink.
    A cup half full with mind empty of everything but you; a soft silhouette
      hovering
    above my head.
    I can’t help but cry.

    The Space Around These Words
    by Claire Ollivain

    is where you’ll find me, quiet.
    I am the air and you do not see me;
    I am the roots of your lungs, giving
    you the redness of blood,
    and the green veins of leaves.
    I am liquid, and bleed past borders;
    those wounds you call reason.

    Words that mean nothing
    without the space in-between.
    No photograph could pin down
    the air that ‘great’ men breathed –
    & even I
    Could not see nor hear myself
    in the mirror they called I
    if it meant I’d become a letter too.

    There’s no translating the howl of ancient wind; her anger
    and irrational power
    you tried to make still.
    She will haunt you, return
    your last breath
    back to air, back to the space around these words –

    My Mother Says
    by Raz Badiyan

    خود‭ ‬جوانی‭ ‬خوشگل

    My mother says “youth, in itself, is beauty”
    at the time of day where the sun does not cast its shadow.
    She does not see the creases in my eyes;
    There is more dark than light on either side,
    The folds in my heart and the holes in the sky.
    They pile up like clothes on chairs and dust on my bed
    And I circle around them like I have nothing to hide.
    I hide my face behind my hands until they say,
    “Give us a smile”, and after I tell you what I do
    To be beautifulI won’t be smiling and neither will you.

    womens honi

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