Member-only story

The Correct Answer Is No

— No

Ahlam Ben Saga
Black Coffee Poetry
2 min readJan 10, 2025

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A woman with a flower taped on her face with a band aid, holds a burning newspaper, with flames surrounding her. She wears a serious expression.
Image by Rafael Santos via Pexels.

Words of varying shapes and sizes,
Piggy-back on each other, the likes of unbalanced stones.
I made them climb down the pit— the crypt of me
To whip meaning out of each.
They conspire;
Which of them to escape first, the capstone
Or the ones beneath all?
They blaspheme against my gravity.
Some perish;
Their own last words, profanities spun and wrung from pain.
Some persist,
Like a human ladder, clomping up my throat’s uneven steps,
Their faces drooping, deforming, bluing, eyes bloating
Until I cough and wheeze, and rip my lips apart
Against my will.

They fall onto fresh linen sheets,
Swollen and tender to the touch,
White-stained and blood-salted.
I powder them across my face —
Those that survived — words
With muscles sliced, joints minced,
The price of penance.

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Black Coffee Poetry
Black Coffee Poetry

Published in Black Coffee Poetry

Bold brews of poetic excellence. A home for dynamic poems, prose, fiction, non-fiction, SOC, and experimental writing.

Ahlam Ben Saga
Ahlam Ben Saga

Written by Ahlam Ben Saga

Inspired by nature, the night sky, and the Nine Muses, I write poems from the heart 🌌

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