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    Home»Creative

    Survival in the Valley

    And the thread of a constellation hidden behind a sweet morning came when my eyes were full of last night’s dream beyond the mountains, what did I see like belonging and exile?
    By Junnade AliMarch 28, 2023 Creative 2 Mins Read
    Art by Mia Di Mento
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    And the thread of a constellation

    hidden behind a sweet morning

    came when my eyes were full 

    of last night’s dream beyond the mountains,

    what did I see like belonging and exile?

    These sweet stars put me to death

    between nocturnal peaks;

    a corpse in liminal space.

    That existence is violent like this flower

    here, in my grandmother’s 

    rolling fields, rolling rolling fields .. 

    That survival bloomed like a gasp 

    in the shadows of these peaks

    under the triple gem, under the triple gem .. 

    The undying have liberated me,

    undeserving— like an apricot bloom 

    that asked me to find its first petal ..

    I’ve stumbled on yesterday

    where at the foot of this mountain

    I was born in a cradle of stones, 

    I’ve died so crisply

    at the peak of this exile

    on a bed of glacial non-belonging,

    here I live for ever more

    with every gentle stream, every gentle scream

    I, every shade of sacred green,

    here, survival 

    sounds like thunder

    and tastes like butter

    and looks like

    my grandmother

    as she counts zodiacs,

    she, who stretched from sunburnt earth, 

    to become this dream I had

    of a thousand constellations.

    ACAR Honi 2023 poem poetry

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