Title: Shame (of)

Royal Club for Literature and Peace 

Title: Shame (of)

Kasia Dominik (Poland)

Title: Shame (of)

I feel heat. It rises up the back of my neck.

Blood rebels against the silence.

My face—a tight canvas—reddens as my eyes dart sideways, downward, anywhere but straight ahead.

My hands clumsily clutch my cuffs,

seeking refuge in the edges of the fabric.

My heart pounds irregularly, like a drum

beaten by a clumsy child.

My breath narrows, breaks,

barely finding room in my chest,

when thoughts, chaotic and rough,

twitch at my tongue.

But he freezes. He has forgotten

what a sound is, what a word is.

Lurking within all this is a desire—

to disappear, to dissolve into the air,

to no longer feel the gazes

that hurt, yet are so fragile.

I am becoming a prisoner of my own body.

Kasia Dominik (Poland)

documentation : Waffaa Badarneh