“[Silent Messages]
I’ve lost track of all the times
I have passed by married couples or lovers
Dinning at fancy upscale restaurants in foreign cities
When the woman sitting across the table from her lover
Gives me that quick look
Conveying in a painful silence
That she no longer loves him,
That she wishes she were elsewhere…
And each time, I respond with an equally silent look:
Why are you there?
Why don’t you turn this dinner table of triviality on him,
And on everything that happened and is happening
And just walk away?

[Original poem published in Arabic on November 8, 2022 at ahewar.org]”