Ivy Days by Aisha Al-Tarawneh (16, Qatar)*

Scarab beetles dig into its skin
Crawling in beneath the eyes
Metallic whispers behind the curtains
Drawn over the last dredges of its ailing mind
Cry of battlefields in the shadowed world
Hidden beneath an unsteady painting
(It stands before a cracked glass mirror
Painting smiles on the face with the shards)
Searching for sweetened air, head thrown back, the waters crash into it
It drowns in mounds of dying fireflies ​

---

The sun never seemed so far away as it does this day
Pinpricks of rose blood well on its hands
Stinging blisters of thorns growing
From the vestiges of life left inside it
It sails an ocean, a storm, a world of crooked frames hanging on the walls
(Rummage in the broken cupboard
Wrapping bandages around its melting skin)
Blood and bones, broken smiles
Ravens scavenge its wilting thoughts
Picking threads out of the head
Thrumming songs sung by the wolves
Howling between the ears and the world 
Ivy crawling up the walls, blocking the light, barricading it
From the gentle peace. (It hunches over the porcelain sink
Battling for silence inside the room occupied only by it and it and it
                                   -    only me.)