When The Horizon Burned Poem by Yousif Ibrahim Abubaker Abdalla

Not a headline but the horizon devouring itself in flame.
Not a rumor but the firmament torn wide,
a wounded drum
beaten by iron hands.
World War Three.
The syllables descend
like iron rain,
like nails hammered
into the coffin of tomorrow.
They reverberate through cities
built for sunrise for bread ovens, for school bells, for lovers leaning from balconies not for ash drifting like gray snow.
Missiles ascend false constellations brief tyrants of the sky,
etching savage geometry
across a night already afraid.
Satellites blink like sleepless witnesses.
Borders stiffen into scars.
Sirens inherit the wind
and rename it terror.
Tehran trembles in ancient memory.
Tel Aviv gathers its breath like a prayer.
Washington studies luminous maps
as though the earth were arithmetic,
as though grief were measurable.
Across the Gulf, Bahrain, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait the air tastes metallic, prophetic, as if history itself were rusting.
Bases bloom in fire.
Screens flicker like nervous stars.
Leaders pronounce strategy.
Mothers pronounce survival.
World War Three
too vast for the mouth,
too serrated for the tongue.
It is no anthem.
No destiny.
It is the synchronized slam
of a thousand doors.
It is children conjugating fear
in underground grammar.
It is fathers scanning bruised heavens,
searching for God
between detonations.
And yet,
Even as continents quiver,
a candle dares the dark.
Even as engines roar,
hands choose reaching
over ruin.
Even as fury chants,
a single voice refuses the fire.
If this be the brink of history,
let it also be the threshold
of remembrance.
Let humanity recall before the final skyline collapses that wars are born in pride
but buried in names.
Carved in stone.
Whispered in absence.
And the silence they leave behind
is deeper
than any victory
can ever fill.