Short Poems

Some of my shorter poems that I wrote over the years.

Death and the Maiden

Death had fallen for the maiden so fair,

Adorning her locks with jewels rare.

He wove her a crown of roses red,

Yet she danced where mortals tread.

But the maiden was not his to keep,

A wisp of light, too wild, too fleet.

She fled like dawn from midnight deep,

And he wondered—could he fall asleep?

Wonderland

Alice followed the snowshoe hare

as it scurried through the white,

its footprints vanishing in the hush of winter’s breath.

She chased after it—

faster, faster—

until the earth betrayed her,

crumbling beneath her weight,

swallowing her whole.

And then—cold.

Water filled her lungs,

burned her skin,

froze her from the inside out—

until even pain abandoned her.

And then, nothing.

Drifting, weightless,

wrapped in silence,

until—

A light.

A silver thread at the tunnel’s end,

pulling her forward,

pulling her home.

She was finally in Wonderland.

All the King’s Horses

My love swept me into his arms,

lifting me high upon the wall.

But the moment I turned my back,

he let me plummet—let me fall.

I shattered.

Our flame dissolved to ashes and smoke,

a ghost of what once burned bright.

And all the King’s horses,

and all the King’s men,

could never make me whole again.

Evermore

I think I have loved you in endless ways, in countless lives,

beneath the blood-orange skies of a thousand dusks,

beneath the cold glow of moons long forgotten.

I have called you by different names,

whispered them like incantations into the wind,

but always—always, it was you.

My hands have woven and unwoven our fate,

threaded songs into silver chains,

left them at your feet like offerings—

and each time, you take them, unknowingly,

wearing my love without knowing its weight.

And as Tagore would say, still, I find you.

In life after life, in age after age,

forever.

Ghosts

We think ghosts are the scariest—

But most times, they are the saddest,

Wandering souls, lost in the quiet dark,

Demonized by grief,

The weight of sorrow too heavy to shed.

They roam, not for vengeance,

But because they cannot rest,

Even in death,

Forever tethered to the pain of the living.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek