Youth is passing, he said
with a deathless smile
voice lilting
head tilting

It’s tucked like a secret
in the folds of our flesh
it’s written in the open
of our shifting features

Perhaps, not in complete sentences, yet
a halting line, here
a faltering fragment, there
telling punctuation marks...

Once, our blood sufficed as the choice stimulant
hurtling through our veins, singing indestructibility
now, we must supplement it to ward off sleep
—the shallow and the Deep.

© Yahia Lababidi

(Images: private collection)