Shahid Abbas: Two Poems

Illustration: AI

A Name That Echoes Back Empty

I am a room with breathing walls tonight,

a pulse folded into silence,

a heart swollen with unsent sentences.

Something unnamed sits inside me

not pain, not absence

a quiet weight that forgets its own origin.

Even tears hesitate at the edge,

like strangers unsure of my address;

once, they fell without asking

now they linger,

as if I am no longer worth the descent.

He used to speak

not always, but enough

to keep the night from hardening.

Now even his silence

has forgotten my name.

Words scatter when I reach for them,

like frightened birds

refusing the sky of my hands.

What do I call this state

this untranslatable weather of the soul?

No complaints survive here,

no accusations bloom

even grief refuses to point a finger.

I stand among voices

that swear love like a currency,

yet spend nothing on my existence.

Tell me

is it strange

to feel unchosen in a world

that auctions affection to titles,

to names polished brighter than souls?

I walk through crowds of declarations

“humanity,” they say,

“love,” they echo

but their words fall hollow,

like prayers addressed to no one.

And I

I am still here,

an unfinished sentence

no one cares to complete.

Today, I miss my mother

like a forgotten prayer

searching for its God.

Is it so astonishing

that even belonging

visits me rarely?

Something fractures quietly within

not loud enough to be noticed,

not soft enough to be ignored.

Why does no one choose me

without conditions?

Why is my being

never enough on its own?

They measure me

against shadows of others,

against stories I never lived

as if my existence

requires justification.

Life

this brief, flickering interval

why is it withheld from me

as if I asked for too much

just to breathe freely?

I have harmed no one.

I have broken nothing

except within myself.

And still

I stand accused

by unnamed expectations.

What is this life?

A fragile trust

leaning toward the unseen.

I look toward Him

and my gaze trembles,

fixed on a nearness

closer than the vein within me.

I call

He listens.

I long

perhaps,

He listens deeper than I understand.

“No Day for the Earth”

We chose a day for her

as if she waits for names,

as if care can be dated.

We said the right things.

Soft words,

carefully placed

like flowers that never touch the ground.

Still,

some hearts

quiet, stubborn

keep a small light alive

and call it hope.

She does not live in days.

She moves in slower truths

in mountains that do not speak,

in rivers that carry more than water,

in trees

that remember

even when we forget.

It reaches the mind

this knowing.

But somewhere before the heart,

it falls.

We breathe because she lets us.

We live

and still take.

There is something wrong in us:

to lean on what holds us

and call it weight.

One day,

we will lie in her again

without voice, without claim.

And she will take us back

the way she always has.

No questions.

Beneath her,

there is no difference.

No names survive there.

She gave without asking.

Forests.

Water.

Sky.

Enough.

And we keep undoing it

slowly,

as if nothing breaks at once.

We ask,

what will it change?

But things do not end loudly.

They leave

piece by piece.

A tree gone.

A river less.

Air

a little harder to hold.

Until one day,

it is not the same world.

She will remain.

She has time.

We do not.

So this is not for her.

It is for us

if we still want to stay.

Shahid Abbas is a renowned writer and poet from Kirpala 421 G.B., Tandlianwala, Faisalabad, Pakistan, whose work reflects depth, creativity, and a profound literary voice.