Darling Dotty sought the priest; he ate her favourite bug, and now she doesn’t speak.

The thick, groping arms of disappointment feed me with a blackened spoon well. Dunked in soap, held underwater, yet still undesirably unclean – the spoon that knows my canines’ dips and crevices like a night guard’s mask. You are asked not to expect, for if you do, disappointment will surely follow, but how can you not expect the greatest and, alongside it, greatness?

In a world full of let-downs and rose-coloured glasses which are casually shattered by terrible actors, I must not shatter myself in the meantime. It touches me like a distant friend, reminding me that it is alive and feeding near, which, to me, means I have not yet reached the person, place, or thing I need to.

I know that relationships are my most tender opening.

Relationships paired with fragility have a history of filling themselves, hand in hand, within me. I also know that I have yet to reach my greatest and biggest love. Though I have sworn off of men over a handful of times, I keep half a steady heart ready for when that great person does come along. I am not afraid to say that I expect them. Perhaps too often, but I expect what I deserve, and what I deserve is to come.

I deserve great love! What a statement! A bleeding heart can still survive in and with love; I don’t mind being the example of that even if the one currently knocking on the wooden chest at my bedside does not do so to mend the gash.

I reckon that means I deserve all of the happiness, success, warmth, and gold I can endure as well, and why shouldn’t I? I wish to look forward earnestly rather than bury myself in the mud of the state of early disappointment. I can welcome it and wish for more; I wish to try again.

Speaking of matters of the heart specifically, it is not easy to truly believe that I will find my honeymoon boy bred from dear matrimony, living and dying together with the man who made this possible, but I want the greatest.

I want the wind to blow out of my curls and into his, guiding us over the years to each other if that is what it takes. Disappointment stings until it carries me forward to whoever and whatever I need now, at this time.

I will remain hopeful, even when burnt bridges leave scars on my calf and rigid, familiar arrows sticking from my temple; this body is still carrying my, for now, lopsided heart. Fury and I interlink, but not at all times, and the sadness will disappear in order for me to hold another breath completely, wholly swallowed in a way only explained by the great greatness.

The greatness I waited for, even with a lap full of dead shadows, holding an empty mug.

Dotty

I want a God. I want a home in God. I haven’t sought the priest because I worry about being let down by them or the church. With love, I will dabble and search naturally as I have always known to do. With God, I have never reached into knowledge. I worry about knowing, and worse, I worry about searching. I worry about the bugs not existing to speak my name and, worse, them being eaten.

Boy? I have been let down tremendously. A priest? I can only imagine that disappointment acting as the punishing knife in my shoulder, a permanent crack in the heart.

I do not fear being saved, but living with the hand of the savior in my chest holding my pulsing organ. There is a difference between ignorance, being led astray, and being held in death.

I haven’t drawn my boundaries with spirituality, and I am not even sure that I am supposed to excuse them. May I have my own wish while I look to someone else?

The day I fear less of the sliver, I am sure you will hear from me.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

Hung

Bellies torn to shards of a gate swallowing breaded words before palms flipped over in offerings.

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“I’m a writer.”

“What kind?”

“A poet.”

“I’m sorry.”

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Cutting Fish on the Tile

Toes crunch within salted sheets

Unknown to dropped gazes

Fed with a broken shoulder

Only cowering to a heart when bent necks shiver from midnight sweats

The suffered gills of the lake's fish cut and glimmer

Sharpen and deafen

Scales on tongues to damage

Colliding with a stranger sat strange in your small ears

Falling over fallen girls with men to damn

Collars scratched

Only in this bed do you reek of your sins leaving colour on my pillow

My chest is dense.

What more to call on?

Sink in the soil, juice your own soul and lay your body to a tree before you call upon me.

I drink a car's motor and stuff my silicone wrist, standing up from the bathroom tile, the crystallized bed removed, and my frame softening to September's olive breath

Still shaken from your sugared nose

Caught in the wind of your powdered nails

I mimic your drunken wails until you complain

The deceit eats at my spine

I will make friends with the deceased fish.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

My hands lay at my sides, dusty. I shake my own hips open to wake my seconds-behind diaphragm into this morning’s proper, deep breath. These exhales are supposed to be lighter in the summer, though suffocation tightens my long throat when I wake in the empty bed of August. I could be on a slab of marble, drifting afloat, and I would care not to mind. I …

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It was about ten years since I visited my hometown. After moving away, though still close by, my family and I never went back.

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There is much for me to say of desolate water. Water that is polluted, pungent, and even murky, all while remaining still, desolate, and unkind.

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“I write because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” Sylvia Plath

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Sugar Once Inside

Breathing into myself takes gusts of wind sent from giants above, ordered by Zeus, before I again fall ill to the ghost felt from your dreary, cold absence.

Left, but lingering.

Prickle the goosebumps of my skin; grey ink places you here in an attempt to hold you by ribbon strings on this stale ground.

The neighbours refuse to mow the la…

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Do you willingly speak of love?

Can you willingly speak of love?

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Widow

Shaking trimmed elk.

Kneeling to distant cattle.

I solemnly step to and from there, closer to here, hazy when juggling hatched offspring to fallen skies.

Beady frames now cursed by daddy's eyes.

His eyes once stood as a puppy’s would, content in his stiff collar.

Branded with an initial.

The same black eyes now droop on a slanted face, shot with a steam…

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I have heard it all. A horse, a canary, a rabbit. Now as an adult, if you asked me and I had to pick, I would not say an animal, but instead I would like for my spirit to be lifted and stored in a giant, towering tree somewhere. I am grounded to the earth, even in the afterlife, yet watching from above almost all. Visited by critters and insects alike, my branches drifting in synchronized movements with the wind.

I have come to ask myself, after beginning to write on this topic of reincarnation, how can I choose who to become before I even decide who I am today? “Man plans, and God laughs” (Yiddish Proverb), so would God not laugh at me deciding which species of fish I would prefer to be, vainly judging them by the colour of their scales and fin length? Though what if that is our only comfort?

What if the only way we can warm up to the idea of death is wishing that we somehow live on, especially believing we can do so in our preferred way/bodies of choice? Would God laugh at us comforting ourselves? I do not believe so.

If you knew me, you would know I do not know Him well. So these are merely questions I throw up and send to you readers, rhetorical or not.

At six, I had not learned the roots of reincarnation. I must have only vaguely heard of it from a friend or family member who was choosing their animal that day, allowing me to join the conversation with my butterfly idea. It was not until religion class in year eleven, where we briefly learned of Buddhism and Ancient India, that this topic had been brought to my attention on an educative level, not as simple as being reincarnated into your pick of pony. The term “rebirth” was taught and differentiated from what I knew “reincarnation” to be.

Instead of me jumping into an ant’s exoskeleton, my brain attached and carried through death, in Buddhism, it is believed that your soul will live on (be reborn) into another body after death. Same soul, new brain, new body, no choice. Not that we knew we really had the choice anyway, but in this culture specifically, it is not an option.

When they speak of rebirth, rebirth does not happen in an absolute way once, twice, three times, or twenty times. It depends on the suffering of the soul. I worry about how many souls are on their thousandth body, repeating the same begrudging mistakes and attitude. The cycle of rebirth (samsara) will continue until the soul finds absolute peace. No hatred can be present in the mind, body, or heart, simply the lightness of serenity. Nirvana is the term for when you are finally freed from the rebirth cycle. This means your soul will not carry on again to another body when your current physical body dies. You have reached enlightenment.

I only learned of rebirth in relation to Ancient India in school, though I am aware that beliefs vary worldwide, spreading over many religions, and even different from one Indigenous tribe to another.

So what do I believe?

I told you that if I had to make a decision of a body, for you were asking me for a straight answer, that a tree would be my current choice. Current is they keyword. I cannot say that I will believe this indefinitely, so keep in mind what I am about to say is not irrevocable.

At this time, I would not choose reincarnation or rebirth. I would hope for peace, and to be let go from this earth, these loves, these wars, our past, and our future. I would want to move on from all of this. After a magnificent life lived with children of my own, it would be their turn to take on the world with their own offspring and families. Then my duties can shrivel, and I can fly high, not with the feathered wings of a bird sprouting from these shoulders, but with the harmony of newborns cries, and laughter, raising me to the sky. Letting me go.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

Cruelty from the body of someone you love is a bridge your footsteps never truly pass; you can never forget such a thing. I can still feel my soles on that wood very well. I would wake from my sleep and call you—not literally, but my body would scream to wake you. From a bed, miles away, I was spiritually attached to a cursed man in a sheep’s body; I ca…

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Horsefly

We were wet with pinstriped tongues, the white and black lines hovering, pierced to adopted skin; I sleep with your youngest and plead for you to guide to him.

Cherries split my bottom lip in the spring; the swollen top meshes with a liquor you pour down one side of my esophagus, strictly and continuously without remorse or second thought of the …

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And if it is a story with hope accompanied by the writer’s generous hand of luck, that person is swept back up in the end. I began to write today about belonging and, more so, the lust of it. Do you feel like you belong? Personally, I feel comfortable in my skin here on this earth, but do I really feel a profound sense of belonging? Not really.

Most who have a sense of belonging either have a tight grip on their community, or they give their bodies and souls to a higher power, or they shower themselves with the affectionate lips of the lover who makes them feel at ease when their feet wake on the muddy ground, but what about that guy?

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To some this may seem incredibly lucky, maybe even desirable. Now, I do not deny it is that. I have worked extremely hard to become rid of anything and anyone holding me back in my life; I have full reins on my world, apart from you know who above and/or below, but that doesn’t mean I am not alone in many ways.

"However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves." Joan Didion, On Self-Respect (1961)

I wake up with no one beside me; I walk into a home with no rustling of little hands playing or a man washing up, only the sound of cars passing, if even that; and I go to bed with no one beside me either. Peaceful, right? Yet here I am; I stand on this bed I laid for myself.

I have found it not only tiring to be in a relationship as of late but even more so, a chore I surely do not want to invest my time in. Picky? Sure. High expectations? Absolutely, and guess what, I am not changing. I provide too well for myself and do too much on my own to accept anything less just so I can have a limp body next to me to breathe over the book I am reading and talk through the movie I adore. I sound like a lot of fun, don’t I?

This issue here isn’t necessarily availability. Time-wise, we will get into that later, but the population of people on earth at this very moment is 8.3 billion. I am aware there is no shortage of singles; the issue I have with being with someone and playing around with the idea of a future with them is the fact that I know I do not need them. I understand that there was a time with them, a time before them, and there will be a time after them when I undoubtedly will feel at some point throughout that like they are clogging up not only my self-image but also my greatly earned independence.

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I know I will meet someone some day that will not make me feel like this. Someone who will shift this ‘independence is my only positive and successful way through my life at this very moment’ scene, but this is my current state of affairs.

Let’s get to the point of time availability... So, I do not want a relationship. Easy fix for being single: adopt a pet or spend time with friends. What does a financially independent woman have? Finances. What does a woman have to do for her finances? Work. Now both of those fixer-upper options are thrown to the bottom of a wrecked bin. I refuse to get myself an animal with my work schedule. I know that I do not have enough time to dedicate to them, and on top of that, I do not have the readiness to see friends or even talk to them some days because of my schedule. I also suffer from this thing called ‘I like what I do too much’. When I am not at my ‘job’ job, shall I say, I am working on my writing, or my art, or blogging, which are other jobs of mine I would have to immensely decrease in order to spend time with an animal or see anyone.

I may be alone, but I cannot bring myself to do that, at least not yet. See how I mentioned the bed I laid for myself? This is all my doing.

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day." Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1954)

Alone versus lonely. There are times when I am alone but not lonely and vice versa. When I have my head in a Didion book, soaking myself into her recounting moments she has lived, I am alone; physically in my room I am alone, but when I am with Joan, I am not lonely. Often if I am in a space at night, the 1% of times I accept an invitation to go somewhere, I am surrounded by plenty of people, even some I am in conversations with, so I am not alone, but I always feel lonely.

I didn’t always feel this way. I used to drop everything at a text message inviting me out because I was aching to feel alive. When I learnt that I never quite did catch the high of life being around so many unfulfilling people, I found true contentment putting the control back in my hands and regaining my world. No more substance abuse, no more parties, no more ‘party friends’ who only cared about me when I was in their direct line of vision and within arm’s length. I became an independent woman when I realised I only had myself; I only needed myself, but more importantly, I only wanted myself.

I think about Ophelia.

In a past essay I did, ‘I Met Ophelia, but She Could Not Look At Me’, I recall my trip to the Tate Britain and my experience standing in front of my favourite painting. I say, “I could look at her, but she could not look at me. If you are thinking to yourself, “Of course she cannot look at you! She is a painting.” Then you do not quite understand my point. In my thirty minutes of prior searching for where she was hung, I was held in the glances of hundreds of painted eyes. Painted eyes that could even follow you from one entrance to one exit, always seeming to have you in their vision. Ophelia, however, does not have the ability to look at who is in front of her no matter where you stand; trust me, as I did try to meet her gaze. She is always looking up and away. She is always drowning and alone.”

I understood so deeply what was happening because of how I feel when I am around people too. Put me in a busy street, and I will feel like I am in a river, drifting outside of my own body, simply wishing to wash up on the shore of my front door, where I can work on my writing in peace and feel the veins under my skin in serene harmony.

Of course I want the great love of my life and children to bear with him, but at the moment, my freedom has come from a clarity that I only know from my own independence. The independent woman may be alone and, at times, many times, lonely, but that never means that she is not happy. I beg to dangle this point across your faces with a velvet string; I am more than okay with this bed. I know the opposite; I felt the wet and rotten ground and saw the razor-sharp, harrowing teeth, and I chose this.

I was once out of my cage; turns out I like it better in here.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

I recently met with a conclusion. Now, a conclusion at twenty-five seems merely unnatural. I should give myself another fifty years before I reach a true and sincere conclusion, but I am going to share this with you anyway because I do not see my mind changing on this fact—yes, I indeed said “fact”—anytime soon.

The conclusion is I’m constantly searching for something, anything, yet I only reach one destination: myself.

Take me as an example, since I am writing from my own human experience, with every interest, with every share of a post, with every ‘rebrand,’ with every hair colour, with every closet revamp, with every ‘start over,’ even with every new school I ever went to, I was always still me. My baggage remained at every doorstep, in the grips of my own left hand, without my even knowing I was holding ten pounds of luggage from my past. I looked down and could not see it, but it was always there.

This happens to be the human experience; you cannot and will not outrun yourself. You just so happen to be the only person you will ever truly have, ever own, and hopefully, ever completely and entirely understand... fingers crossed with that one.

Perhaps we are all dogs chasing our own tails, and I am specifically a writer chasing my own heart while you are chronically a twisted romantic chasing the love that can only ever sprout from your own body and no one else.

Have you ever been in a relationship or friendship where you felt as if you were chasing down this person to get to the root of their needs or simply worrying so deeply to get to know the innards of their soul, yet you cannot seem to? You end up on blogs directing you to what your horoscope has to do with this and how your attachment is not secure; hence, if you fix that, you WILL be able to solve ALL of your problems and get to know your ONE true love or, again, friendship, the way you have always wanted! Everything always comes back to us.

It is always about our mindset, our interpretation, the way we see things differently than others, and how that affects our daily lives. It is never about the other person. The love we chase is because we do not have enough of it from ourselves. You have heard that before, right? So then, soul searching is the next duty of business to tackle. One that is not as easy as journaling with a cup of tea and grounding your feet in the bare soil, though I do not deny it may bring you closer to the feeling of a comfortable home within yourself. I, however, do not doubt that the day I am eighty-one, I will still find more ways to explore myself and knock on my own doors.

This is a lifelong sequence, a cycle that will not be broken. It may be ignored; let’s think upon the saying “Ignorance is bliss” by Thomas Gray, but it cannot be broken.

I recently started making art of my drawings. I have always doodled for friends and past lovers, but now I make sketches and paintings to get what I want to say across in another way. Now, as a writer already, how much more can I really have to say? And it turns out the answer to that is tons. I have so many messages to get across, and I will continue to find whatever medium I can to do so. I did photography for that very reason, and now I am doing art for that very reason; I sang for that very reason, I acted, and I continue to write for that reason. No matter what I do, I find myself at the end of the theoretical, or not, monologue.

I am always left with myself.

My making of art means me coming to terms with how I feel. Even feelings I once tried to bury deep, they come up naturally when I choose art to spit it out. I took God into my hands when I chose art as my outlet. The message I am sending through my work, why am I sending it? Why did I choose to make this? Once I finish the piece, I only ever feel at least .1% more complete and content with myself.

Everything I do brings me back to me.

No matter what interest I guide myself through, or who I believe the next love of my life to be, I know, I will always be left with myself. I will forever continue to learn about my own two hands and my own two feet, the very ones I spent my life trying to, even without knowing, exceed.

I went into this talking about a conclusion, and even though my words stand as a correct sentiment to my experience in this life so far and moving forward, I intend for it to be more of an introduction. Now that I have the awareness to understand particularly what is going on and how I have been able to greatly, and consistently, explore new versions of myself, I do find this to be a happy introduction after all.

You will meet yourself time and time again, it is your choice to explore them.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

Every journal I have ever owned has been ripped to shreds, by me. I have finished notebooks where I keep collections of poetry, to-do lists, and random thoughts, but never have I completed a journal.

Every journal I own that has yet to be thrown out is missing either its first whole half of pages or a quarter of that, leaving a withered and empty notebook ready for a ‘fresh start’. I say ‘fresh start’ in quotes because I deeply understand that once a single letter is written in any book, even if that single letter is torn out, it can never revert back to its original, new state again.

With my poetry, I do not have this recurring issue. I like to keep old poems of mine, and I do believe it would hurt me immensely if I were to lose any of my poems. So why do I guard my poems with the walls of stone I nickname my heart and throw journal entries to the trash, always shredding them into a million different pieces when they reach their inevitable expiry date?

I have come to grasp the fact that my poems are my life in my own riddles and metaphors that, in most cases, only I can understand. I can read them and feel deep hurt or passionate love, but it will not fill me with such disgust and betrayal as an entry would. Pages of my journal are not curated or whimsical tellings; they are raw and devoid of any mystery. My emotions are written as they are inside, normally without any time to process; names are named plainly, and when I open up a page and see this writing, I do not feel the want to keep it.

The same way I want to get over an event, the same way I do not want any physical remembrance of it. It pains me to be able to read so much of what I do not want to. Even if I never open the book, its presence, even sitting and creating a home on my desk, is too much for me to bear at times.

A writer without stacks of journals recounting their life? Sounds odd, but who made it a rule that writers need to do that?

Someone may say that in the future, I will regret not writing everything down or keeping everything that I do write down, but to that I would tell them, ‘I have my poetry.’

Beauty can be seen in my poems by the eyes of others, and for that, I am grateful. A random person can read a poem of mine and have their own understanding of it and what it means to them, but for me, they are my diary. I know what every line means, why every word has been chosen and why, on the day it was written, I chose to write it. They are how I keep track of my world and how I remember those in my life. My poems are what I have to look back on.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

And I don’t blame you for it.

I believe that everyone you meet changes the trajectory of your life, and every single day's experience is like a domino effect to your world. I say, this is what I believe, but of course, this is what we all know. Stepping out for a coffee could mean you meet a barista who you then become friendly with, and they cause a horrible event to happen in your life years later. All this started because you wanted coffee one day and you saw good in that person. Maybe you had a crush, or they were funny at first; regardless, human interactions shape our world and change our lives.

Everyone’s life is like this.

I am impatient. He lacks a conscience. I am quick to get angry. He is quick to disappoint.

I love more. He is forgiving. I plan the future. He means well.

We love, and we fall; we all are flawed. Flawed in ways some of us never see coming or never truly get to the bottom of. Humans are tarnished beings. Every day has the ability to cause a chip on our shoulder, but not all of these holes can be filled. Some of them remain black holes cut out from our abdomen, no heart has enough blood to fill, and the way we then look at others or ourselves, after the damage has been done, is plainly faulted.

I don’t think God made you like this. I think it was the people around you and your surroundings that made you out to be the way you are now. I can complain, but you can say the same for me too, and your neighbours, and your teachers, and whoever you sit next to on the train.

Maybe He planned all of this, but maybe we grew to surprise Him the same way we surprise ourselves. Even if we live a comfortable, safe life, and we tiptoe in and walk on eggshells all night long, there are days we cannot see forth.

No one knows what becomes of a day; I still think of you like it was yesterday.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)

Ribs

Synched to tortured animals, unsharpened lead reaches me first. Touches of steam lick the last writer to breathe on the King's hill before any knight is sent to carry her home.

Send for another when the eclipse delivers the remains of lambs your way. Chins and knees represent a long-forgotten love, yet you tremble before them, shaking in the presence of the pure.

The sacrificed is always feared or pitied. I could do without the cartilage dressed in ink and the letters you burn.

Trails on hills, bandages cemented to perfect shins, the water that breaks will bring you to me. Shadows thrust forward; this locket stores them in the midwife's cold ribs.

By Sarah Shihab (Sarentries)

(Instagram/TikTok/X)