Hibah Shabkhez




Words scatter like bunties, in waterfalls
Rainbow-hued and melodious. Like day,
Appearing in patches, building blue walls,
Proving slice by slice its own existence;

Like rivers, nurturing the intertwined
Colours and flavours of a myriad lives,
They yield no secrets. They will not be mined
By stray drifters, by vagabond sparrows

Who must, like me, speak in verbal typos.
So, with five full languages and three cultures
Hung between us, I send emojis, those
Revived hieroglyphs of tongue-tied youth

A smirking ghost, a lumbering tortoise,
A long-necked dinosaur pop up: you know
I’m saying hi. You send strings of turquoise
And pink hearts, lucid as a summer sea.





Hibah Shabkhez is a writer and photographer from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Penine Platform, Rust and Moth, Think Journal, The Font, The Raven’s Muse Magazine, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.