I Think of You When I Hold My Breath

Written by Lara Abuali when she was twelve, I Think of You When I Hold My Breath is a coming-of-age debut collection of verse exploring life changes, infatuation, prejudice, landscapes, and alienation. Every poem in this book has something forbidden in its centre, an implied idea or a blunt mention of taboos. Lara's words can take delicate steps but sometimes they come out stomping. There are secrets to discover in the lines.

Lara, who is Palestinian-Canadian, was born and raised in Hong Kong, and now lives in Jordan and Switzerland. A keen creative writer since the age of six, Lara was awarded the Scholastic Gold Key Award in 2018 by the US Alliance for Young Artists & Writers for her poetry collection Sleepless. Her work was selected from among more than 346,000 submissions as "the most outstanding work submitted in your region."

Lara's upcoming poetry collection is called The Yellow of August.

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Poem from I Think of You When I Hold My Breath


PARTY LIFE

hurried steps on concrete paths
oh, hopeless loves:
oh, hopeless lives:
a life of indifference.
miscommunication.
disconnection.
slivers of fame are
all I see through banded sunglasses.
blurred, bitten,
unheard through streamers of screamed solos:
unheard through the ignorance of emerald islands.
you think, you wonder, you observe but you are
hopelessly bewitched.
you'll keep picking apples from dead trees
while hope falls like dust from their cyanide-laced seeds.