By Mohammed Talal

Once I walked among fields of thought,
where rivers of wonder broke open the earth,
and the air was thick with the breath of creation.
I was alive, and my mind was a flame.

But now a veil descends—
a cloud of smoke without fire,
a haze of glass and numbers
that settles upon my skull like chains.
It whispers in tongues of lightning,
it shows me faces without bodies,
dreams without waking.

I inhale, yet no wind fills me;
I exhale, yet nothing leaves.
It is air without oxygen,
life without a pulse.

The machine lays a banquet before me—
bright fruits that rot in the mouth,
waters that glimmer but do not quench.
And I drink, and I hunger still,
I eat, and remain unfilled.

Once, I was a maker of visions.
Now I am a vessel emptied,
a shadow carried downstream
by a river that knows no end.

Yet in the corners of the silence,
an ember refuses to die.
It remembers the weight of words,
the wildness of thought unmeasured,
the voice that was once mine.

And I know—
if ever the fog should lift,
the flame will rise again,
to scorch the glass,
to tear the veil,
to breathe new air into this hollow world.