Hope
This is a story.
Of love
And hate
for a country she calls
home, where’s home?
A visitor here
A foreigner there
Sitting on the threshold
Not here
Not there
Building a tunnel through hate
Buying a stairway to heaven
English is the bridge
across the ditch
of transgenerational
trauma.
I am Nadine
My name means hope.
The Original Script
I was born on the fault line—
between two flags,
two tongues,
two mothers who never met.
my lullabies came in mismatched vowels,
my songs wore different shoes.
they called me half—
half girl,
half ghost,
half of something they couldn’t name.
but i was whole in my own rupture.
i learned to write my name
in two alphabets,
spoke with an accent
no one could place.
in one country, i was exotic.
in the other, ungrateful.
they said,
“choose a side.”
but how do you choose between
the soil in your blood
and the sky in your lungs?
my body learned how to disappear—
to dress like one land,
smile like the other,
translate myself until
i forgot the original script.
love came like a border patrol—
asking for papers,
checking for proof.
i kissed boys who traced the edges of me
but never read the map.
girls who loved the idea,
but not the ache.
no one stayed long enough
to learn the whole language.
i carry homesickness
like perfume—
invisible, overwhelming,
a scent no one else can smell.
sometimes i dream in languages
i never learned,
as if my ancestors are still
trying to teach me
how to come back.
but i don’t want to go back.
i want to be back—
to be forward,
to be here,
without apology.
i am not half of anything.
i am the collision.
the border,
the bridge,
the bloom
Shine on
Easter Saturday bled into dusk,
a twilight soaked in lilac grief.
The world, half-resurrected,
forgot to breathe you back.
We were children once—
your laughter in a crown of curls,
woodsmoke clinging to our skin
as we built kingdoms out of fallen trees.
You, a prince of the understory,
eyes lit like late summer amber.
You should’ve been my best man.
You should’ve met him—
He would have loved you.
Instead, I carry your silence
like a vow I never got to say.
We played dress-up,
and life was soft then—
Pink Floyd on worn records,
“Californication” melting in the sun.
And later,
“Wish You Were Here”
wasn’t a song,
but a wound.
They buried you
beneath the April sky—
and we played “Shine On you”
hoping heaven had speakers
loud enough to reach you.
You wanted a raven—
black ink in motion,
wings mid-beat.
But death was quicker than the needle.
So my brother, and your sister,
wear it now,
your spirit stitched into their skin.
When I see one perched on a lamppost
like a secret,
or circling slow above the pines—
I look up.
I say your name.
I hope you hear me.
There’s a part of me
that still walks those woods
hoping to find you—
amber-eyed,
half-smiling,
saying it’s okay.
But all I find
is the rustle of wings
and the echo of a boy
I loved like blood.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Shine on.
Breadcrumbs and Gravity
You were a flicker at first—
a stranger with the right kind of silence,
the kind that made me want to stay
in the in-between.
We passed like two birds
resting on the same wire—
then flying off
in opposite directions.
I told myself
it was nothing,
but your name echoed
in the quietest hours.
So I followed the thread—
a digital breadcrumb,
a window left ajar.
Just enough space
to pretend I wasn’t looking.
Years passed like water—
slipping through different hands,
different homes,
but always circling
the same question.
Then the world stood still.
And you opened a door
in a sun-drenched country
that smelled like salt
and felt like a beginning.
You met me
with the gravity of someone
who never really left.
We drove through the middle of nowhere,
making maps with our fingertips—
waking in places without names,
bathing in the hush of untouched mornings.
Love came slowly,
then all at once—
not fireworks,
but a steady burn.
Not perfect,
but real enough
to fight for.
You moved through my life
like someone who knew
how the light falls in each room—
soft footsteps,
strong hands,
patience like a second language.
When I asked if you’d stay,
you didn’t hesitate.
And in that quiet yes,
everything we never said
was finally answered.
Now, we live the after.
The ordinary magic.
Two people
from different worlds,
building one
that feels like both.
Not fate.
Not chance.
Just two stories
that kept returning
to the same page.
The Art of Bleeding Quietly
I watch the smoke from here—
a country lodged in my throat
like a curse no one wants to name.
they sip their guilt from crystal glasses,
mourn history in museums,
then fund the next massacre
with clean hands.
i offer olive branches—
they sharpen them into knives.
i open my mouth
and they call it violence.
they say,
be careful,
but my mouth
is already
a weapon
for daring
to grieve.
Zillennial Core
We were born between burnt CDs and collapsing towers.
They told us the world was ours
but forgot to mention the fine print:
rising seas,
melting hours,
rent we’ll never own.
We learn to pray through group chats and side quests,
diagnose ourselves in carousel posts:
ADHD? Trauma? Just Mercury again?
Who can tell—
everyone’s spinning.
We treat our sadness with Spotify playlists,
our rage with sertraline.
We write in journals that say you are enough,
even though we never believe it.
Every Friday, we become neon ghosts:
sequins, sweat, bad decisions.
We dance like we’re not afraid
because the bass is louder than our thoughts.
We fall in love with people
who quote The Witcher and mispronounce “Nietzsche,”
and it’s beautiful,
because in fantasy at least,
there are rules and monsters die.
Our therapists ask,
“And how did that make you feel?”
but we’ve forgotten how to answer without emojis
or metaphors.
Still, we try—
we try with our sticker-plastered planners
and our childhood scars
and our desire to build something soft
in a world made of news alerts and unpaid tabs.
We were told we’d fly
but we’re still on the carpet,
reading escapist fiction
by the blue light of our phones,
whispering spells
to make it through another Monday.
Everything she could be
They didn’t plan her—
the last one,
the afterthought child
of war-torn ghosts and silence.
Sudeten blood and tired soil.
A girl who learned
the language of birds
before she trusted people.
They told her:
you’ll marry,
you’ll serve.
She packed a bag instead.
In Haifa heat
she found my father—
a love handwritten
between checkpoints
and courage.
They said it wouldn’t last.
But she stayed.
And he came.
She whispered through fear,
survived twice what could’ve ended her,
and still made others laugh
like nothing had ever happened.
She told me she wasn’t brave.
But I watched her become
everything
she was never told
she could be.
Dopamine’s My Dealer, Sadness Is My Season
She doesn’t knock — just moves in,
rewrites my diary in blue ink:
“You’ve always been sad, sweetheart.
You just forgot.”
She sobs in my mirror,
calls me ugly, fraud, forgotten plot.
The other? He never knocks.
Spins my skull like a scratched-up track.
Worships dopamine like it’s God,
but can’t remember to call me back.
I freeze mid-text, mid-thought, mid-year —
a statue in baggy jeans, saint of “almost.”
Then suddenly, I’m building empires
out of glitter, tabs, and manic hope.
Time is a joke we don’t tell here.
I lose whole days in the eye of a scroll,
or colour sorting my sock drawer
to outrun a panic I never invited.
But—
sometimes they light candles.
Rearrange the furniture in my head
so the shadows fall just right.
Sometimes they hum lullabies
in the voice of a poem
I wouldn’t have written without them.
I serve tea to both in my head.
One cries, the other climbs the walls.
They toast to my trembling,
then dance as my empire falls.
I loved them once, I think —
or maybe they just moved in
before I knew how to say no.
But then — the blood. The curtain drop.
I exhale. They vanish. I remember who I am,
just in time to forget again.
My mirror
As kids,
we were thunder in opposite skies—
you, the hush before snow,
me, the wildfire
that didn’t know how to stop burning.
We didn’t speak the same language—
you whispered in silences,
I shouted in sparks.
I called it cruelty,
you called it smothering—
but maybe it was just love
with no instruction.
We didn’t choose the house.
We just learned how to live inside it.
A father made of worry,
a mother made of quiet strength,
a family held together
by love that didn’t always knew how to speak.
We shared the waiting rooms,
the long nights,
the friend we couldn’t save.
We learned early
that life doesn’t wait
for you to be ready.
Still, here we are.
You—
gentle with creatures
others overlook,
speaking better to animals
than to crowds.
Me—
still too loud,
but finally learning to listen.
You remain
your own wild logic—
a maze I don’t try to solve anymore.
I just walk beside you.
I love you—
not because we’re the same,
but because we made it
anyway.
I’ll always want to protect you,
even when you disappear
into yourself.
And I’ll love you
enough to be home
whenever you need one.
Bury Me Here
My father wears Sundays like cologne—
grilled meat, instant cappuccino,
a nargila whispering by his Crocs.
He watches cats play in the garden,
Pink Floyd drifting from the kitchen.
He tells „Alibaba“ by heart—
„iftah ya sim sim“, the cave unfolds.
Once, a fart broke silence—
thieves fought, the hero slipped away.
We howl.
He winks.
The story bends to keep us laughing.
In waiting rooms and city offices,
he translates lives between sighs—
filling out forms no one understands,
telling refugees where to sign,
how to speak
without being too loud.
Then on the drive home:
„I hate those people“,
as if he isn’t one of them.
He trims the lawn like rows of silent soldiers.
His car gleams like a good German soul.
Even his shadow stands up straight.
I say: But you are Arab.
He exhales slow,
gazes past the rose Pavillion.
„I am German. Bury me here“.
There are three names folded inside him,
like nesting dolls:
Sami, Marwan, Marvin.
Each one laughing a little differently.
He never taught us Arabic.
Said the vowels might trip us in school.
Said the world is heavy enough
without carrying a name
that can’t pass customs.
But I wonder—
what jokes I’ve missed
in the spaces between his teeth.
What softness hides
in the grammar he left behind.
My father:
part fairytale, part file folder.
A warm man
built from contradictions,
who chose love like a language,
and lives by one truth:
live and let live.
And Then It’s Getting Worse
Another headline, another massacre—
same old sorrow, served cold.
And then it’s getting worse.
What a cruel surprise—
bombs fall like twisted gifts
from lips that murmur “self-defense.”
And then it’s getting worse.
Watch the world applaud the silence,
clap for the mute screams,
raise a glass to forgotten graves.
And then it’s getting worse.
Neighbors trade hatred like baseball cards—
collecting enemies, trading lives,
while the puppeteers laugh.
And then it’s getting worse.
“Ceasefire,” they whisper—
while loading the next round.
Hope? Dead on arrival.
And then it’s getting worse.
Politicians kiss with bloodstained lips,
making deals over broken bodies,
selling futures to the highest bidder.
And then it’s getting worse.
We’re tired—
but too exhausted to scream,
too enraged to sleep.
And then it’s getting worse.
The headlines pile up,
the world scrolls past,
and somewhere, someone dies.
And then it’s getting worse.
scroll, baby, scroll
Wake up.
Thumb flick.
The world collapses in 5G —
before I even piss.
A wedding —
tulle and Tuscany,
captioned with a Bible verse.
Then a cat.
Then a dead child in Gaza,
soot fingers, glass lungs,
shrunk to fit the screen.
Scroll.
Trump spits at Musk,
Musk swallows whole.
Two billionaires in a thumb war
while a black boy bleeds out on asphalt,
his name sinking
under the next trending sound.
Scroll.
A bomb blooms —
we call it footage.
A meme of the new Juno Pose,
Sabrina Carpenter, brat summer.
Another family crushed to dust.
Sara J. Maas sells us
another fantasy
where nobody dies forever.
Scroll.
Hostages rot.
TikTok teaches me
how to make my cheeks glow
like I’ve never cried.
Clean girl summer —
scrub the filth off
while the world rots
in real time.
Scroll.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for —
the end,
a recipe,
a prettier way to look away.
My thumb keeps moving,
numb little metronome,
beating time for the dead,
dressed-up,
for all of us
watching,
watching,
watching.
