malalai khan

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's small, white and faint—
it might be a dream, or a phosphene.

Skinned fingertips graze along the floor—
I have long given up trying to find the walls.
The darkness stretches into an endless hall.

Words come out just as colourless,
eaten by the deafening silence—
I don’t know my name, my face.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's piercing through my eyes, blinding,
a tensed arrow still kept on the bow.

The solid weight of emptiness
presses on me like a forlorn tomb,
my heart beating back in a womb.

Buried alive in a lonely grave,
the echo chamber collides my voice back,
leaving me with a body to drag.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel—
And there is a joy in knowing that
even if I too know I will never reach it.