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by Ayah Musaad

Not normal bodies but plain skeletons painted with flesh.
Heads swollen, concave stomachs, tired eyes and stick-thin legs…
Kids with no childhoods, orphans; innocents forced to live in fear and stress.
More children, more mothers and more fathers die,
Everyday, like falling raindrops…
Some leave their children to this world,
Leave their babies lost, confused and entirely alone.
As others try their very best to Compose themselves,
While burying their own…

No water, no food or shelter. And no family or relatives.
Just you and this large space…
WELCOME to total loneliness.
No mode of transport, there’s no escape…
Just you and your new best friend; Emptiness.
Shock, confusion, worry, malnutrition.
Anger, sorrow, pain, and finally death…
They all happen, slowly picking on you like a surgeon using forceps…
Poverty feeds on you taking its sweet time, step by step.
A poet once said that, “love has cupid and poverty has stupid”…
I think he meant that poverty’s formed by the wrong decisions made by immoral men.

Today another baby is made an orphan.
This one’s two months old… obliged to face tomorrow alone.
And when he tries to dream of a better home,
Poverty slaps him in the face and says, “Wake up! Can’t you see that I’m a growing seed”
It won’t even give him Time to grieve for his own parents…
He gets no break from this torment; he must become a man today.
A two month old man, laying his parents at rest…
Alas! But don’t stress.
It was not your fault. Poverty was something they could not halt.
May they rest in peace and find true happiness… with Allah.
You don’t have to be a doctor, pharmacist or engineer to help clear this mess.
Just give a percentage of your finance or donate your unworn thick warm dress.
Your money will silence their vacant stomachs’ rumble.
And your dress will form a barrier between their dry bare skin and the harsh winter wind.

There are hypocrites in this world.
And hypocrites in my eyes only live to flaunt and impress.
They try and stop you from bulding a layer of solid skin on a scrawny man’s flesh.
If you want to give a lot they say “you have no guarantee of it reaching them”.
And if you have little to give they say “keep for yourself it might someday be worth a gem”
They say they want to help, and their willing to give… zero percent.

But You my friend are like a pen.
You have the power to make a mark and maybe even change the world…
You can cross out poverty once, and In shaa Allah, for all.
So help them not because they are “just” hungry and poor
But help them because they are simply like you…
Human.