Poetry & community

prayer doesn't warm a heart

that wants human warmth.

I wash my face thrice, my arms, my mouth... the places that have touched the physical world.

the water runs cold and the house is asleep.

I stand to pray with tears still in my eyes.

There are things I know better

than to ask of God.

But I asked once. I asked twice. I asked thrice. 

My pleas are now silent. 

I press my forehead to the floor. 

forgive me.

For everything, for nothing.

I don't know what for. 

The words come. the words go. 

" آمين" 

and then I’m in the room again.

The prayer mat folded at its edges.

The water still cold on my skin while under my clothes I writhe in sticky warmth. 

The dark gathers in the corners of the house.

I have never doubted that God can hear me in my prayer. #

It's the emptiness after that I cannot explain.

I am still here.

My body is still here.

And somewhere in this devotion, the washing, and the weeping,

and the Arabic I know by heart,

there is a colossal part of me that has never learned how to stop wanting.

Sarah’s poem was inspired by her afternoon with Daljit Nagra at Ware Poets in October 2026.