The House
- The Aleph Review
- Jan 7
- 1 min read
Hamza Azhar
A short, reflective poem from Islamabad-based poet Hamza Azhar.
How strange is this house
I live in.
It speaks to me
in your voice.
It's says to me, “Hush, Be quiet!
you are alone,
there is no one here.”
The walls are so warm
I mistake them for skin.
“Boy! Do not step on me
violently
as you do on all the things you have loved,”
says the near-disintegrating floor.
This house will hold me
Only as much and as long
as I remember it in my bones.
The most beautiful thing about this house
is that
it is demolishing itself.
Hamza Azhar is recent graduate of Bachelors in Public Administrationfrom Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad. He has won over half a dozen national poetry competitions on varying platforms and has been published in Pandemonium Journal, Lakeer and Borderless Journal. Find him on Instagram @_hamza.azhar
Hendrik Emil (Rik) Wouters was a Belgian painter, sculptor and draughtsman. Wouters produced 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures in his 34 years before his illness-caused death. he died partway through the First World War on 11 July 1916 in Amsterdam. A sculptor, painter, draughtsman and etcher of typically fauvist style, Wouters' art resembled the works of artists including Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and André Derain–the ‘forefathers’ of Fauvism.