​An Unfamiliar Hunger

Tonight, an unfamiliar hunger tightens around my heart,

I miss your eyes.

I miss the way you used to look at me:

your cold, shadowed gaze,

your deep, quiet warmth,

the look that held surprise,

the one that carried worry,

the one that trembled with excitement,

and most of all,

the look that loved me.

Yes—

I miss loving you.

I am walking through the hardest days of my life.

Days when even seeing my family

through a screen

feels like an impossible wish.

Days when my people are dying

for the simple right to breathe freely,

for a life that deserves to be called life.

In these days,

when I am emptied by grief,

worn thin, unsteady,

when I raise my voice for my people

and stand against a cruel state,

a regime born of darkness,

amid the chaos, the exhaustion,

the forced courage and restless nights,

that same hunger returns,

and I find myself missing you too.

How do you not hear me?

How does silence come so easily to you?

Why don’t you meet my eyes?

Why don’t you break this long silence

and tell me everything will be alright?

Why don’t you pull me into your arms,

wipe away my tears?

My tears are innocent,

they are the most honest language I have.

I am not well.

I am truly not well.

Still, I fight—

against myself,

against the world.

I wish you could see me now.

I wish you would look at me again.

I am fighting to be free of you,

and to free my homeland

from an enemy that calls itself a government.

Thinking of you in these days

sets my soul on fire,

burns me alive.

I wish you would come

and quiet this hunger.

Ashley the name you gave me