When Dawn Trembles Poem by Yousif Ibrahim Abubaker Abdalla

A land alive with numbers not just people, but heartbeats multiplying like unanswered prayers, like seeds flung into a storm that never promised rain.
A sky so crowded it's hard to keep track a constellation overflowing its own edges, yet so many flicker like candles
fighting against a restless wind.
The small dawns,
Oh, those small dawns they nearly fill the horizon, a morning that should shine bright, yet rises pale, trembling like light unsure of its own arrival.
They thrive in a land
where hospitals stand like empty shells, echoing with the ghosts of healing, where medicine feels like a distant whisper, and survival walks barefoot over broken glass.
Then came the season of iron storms not just thunder, but a long, endless night that forgot how to leave.
It split the earth into two hungers, two iron fists grasping for the same fragile breath, while wandering shadows of breath and bone like dust caught between colliding winds were scattered, scattered, scattered.
Homes turned into memories.
Memories became burdens.
Burdens morphed into names without places.
Millions walk no, drift like uprooted trees learning to move, carrying their lives in fragments, as if existence were a shattered mirror
they must piece together with bleeding hands.
And the small dawns always those small dawns they fall like rain that never touches the ground, they break like thin glass beneath heavy boots, they vanish into numbers
that can't hold their stories.
Killed.
Maimed.
Displaced.
The words echo like a cruel lullaby sung to a sleepless world.
Killed like petals torn before they bloom.
Maimed like wings clipped mid-flight.
Displaced like stars pushed out of their constellations.
A sea of small footsteps without maps wandering through a world that forgets them, again and again and again as if home were a mirage
that shifts each time they reach for it.
Hunger grows too not quietly, but like a fire beneath the ribs,
like a silent scream
stretching across empty bowls.
In the soft glow of dawn, there's a haunting sense of hunger woven into the very essence of life, their forms becoming fragile, morphing into questions that hang in the air, unanswered. More than half of them are as delicate as dry leaves trembling, crumbling, and waiting for a season that never seems to come. Yet, the phrase 'not yet' lingers, like a hesitant verdict, as if disaster must make a dramatic entrance before anyone will truly acknowledge it. But what is famine if not this slow unraveling? What is a crisis if not this unyielding decline? The land breathes in and out though unevenly, like a chest burdened by grief. The constellation of survival endures yet it flickers like candles in a storm, measuring each moment as both a triumph and a defeat. And somewhere deep down, beneath the dust, the hunger, and the noise of crumbling skies there lies a quiet heartbeat, small and resilient, like a child who refuses to abandon their dreams. It whispers softly, faintly, yet bravely: This fragile chorus still breathes. This fragile chorus still breathes. This fragile chorus still breathes.