Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sheikha A. @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Hooriyyah
by Sheikha A.

to giving Venus an incarnation

She wears a moth in her ring finger,

holds a burning tower in her palms.

Tonight she will tell him her secret –

leering darkness drowning the moon –

She eyes the pomegranate seeds

half crushed in her bowl of gold –

centuries of alchemy – carving spells –

she is tired of collecting her skins.

Her birth was quiet; still as death

her eyes like fragmented meteors

in abyss. She was beauty decaying

under curses until her gaze fell on him.

He was blue ice on the rims of stars –

sapphire fire – his wings hue of azurite;

his scent sweet dust of moonlit corpses.

She smears crushed juice on her lips,

red dainty petals – gold darkening

contours – he will see her bare bodied,

welts of sulphur on her skin – indigo

pearls – skin flakes shed like star-hail.

She is now complete; old as an echo,

true skin a canvas of streaming veins –

rituals she has embodied for eternity.

She has watched many moons juggle

rank; waves of silence rise and fall –

their whispers of mutiny harnessed –

She was once with eyes of honey-

speckled beryl; beauty of gold-laced

twilight; star trapped in belly of light.

Tonight will be an absence of magic.

The moth on her finger flutters –

ready for flight – she will set him free.

Flesh-less folds of her skin radiating.

Tower in her palms crumbling to ash.

More from author Sheikha A.:

Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).

Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.

Available Here!

2 Responses to Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sheikha A. @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction

Marge Simon says:

April 29, 2023 at 1:45 pm

There is so much to appreciate in this extraordinary poem, as our Sheikha never disappoints. Love the moth /freedom reference and the gemstone choices, which only compliment the magic of this work.

alexgrehyauthor says:

April 29, 2023 at 5:03 pm

Such beautiful imagery replete with meaning – the movement of the tower from burning to ash – intriguing.