LUCID DELIRIUM

I no longer know who speaks inside my head.

One voice claims I am still here; another swears I departed long ago.

I strive to reclaim my countenance, yet my features shift and dissolve

whenever I glimpse them in the mirror of memory.

Since when did I become a mere thought walking upon two feet?

I hear my footsteps echoing within me, not without.

I chase a shadow; the shadow pursues me.

“Who are you?” I demand.

He replies in a voice mirroring my own, yet more honest,

“I am the dream you forgot to inhabit.”

A laugh breaks. I cannot tell whose.

The sound of glass shattering resonates in my mind,

a faint shimmer passing like lightning in the void.

I stand on the edge of stillness, trying to organize the turmoil:

a recollection of a childhood never lived;

the face of a woman unknown—did I once love her?—

and a forgotten sky awaiting a hand to unfurl it.

Am I asleep?

No—

I am more awake than I ought to be.

Is consciousness a curse?

It’s a terminal malady, old friend.

The conversation escalates in my head, words fluttering like broken wings.

The surrounding air is longer oxygen, but a thought breathing through me.

Everything turns into a question:

Who writes whom?

Am I the writer or the written?

Is this existence a protracted dream of an individual who has neglected to awaken?

I stretch my hand into the emptiness and touch a soft wall of light.

The voice warns, “Beware, those are your borders.”

“My borders?” I ask.

It whispers:

“Language.”

I contemplate silence.

Perhaps silence is the only word that has never betrayed a soul.

I call out to myself, but the echo lingers,

as if arriving from a place beyond time.

And as it nears, it whispers, hoarse and cold, “You were well, before you began to think.”

The voices rot away.

Meaning descends like mental dust.

A solitary sentence hangs in the space between my thoughts and my essence.

Delirium is to perceive the truth with a lucidity the mind cannot endure. A final tranquility that pervades everything.

A distant voice, resembling my own, whispers one last time,

“I’m in a state of complete alertness—and I cannot tell if this is the core of insanity.”

Abdulraheem Alshwaily is an Iraqi poet, short story writer, and diplomat. Born in Baghdad in 1952, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Al-Mustansiriya University in 1975. Throughout his professional journey, Mr. Alshwaily has worked in both the Ministries of Trade and Foreign Affairs, and he underwent advanced training at the Foreign Service Institute in 1988. His diplomatic roles have included serving as Consul in Vienna from 1994 to 1998 and as Cultural Advisor at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Athens from 2004 to 2008. He currently holds the position of Consul at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Cairo. In addition to his diplomatic endeavors, Mr. Alshwaily has consistently pursued creative writing, with his poetry and short stories published in various Iraqi, Arab, and international outlets. He is also a member of the Chaldean and Syriac Writers and Authors Union in Iraq.

Essam M. Al-Jassim is a Saudi writer and translator based in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. His writings and translations have been featured nationally and internationally in various Arabic and English-language literary journals. He is the translator and editor of the recently published anthology of flash fiction: Furtive Glimpses: Flash Fiction from The Arab World.