Editors’ Note: The following poem by Mejdulene B. Shomali is part of the notebook I Want Sky, collecting prose, poems, and hybrid work celebrating Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazy, and the lives of all LGBTQ+ Arabs and people of the SWANA region and its diaspora. Edited by Mariam Bazeed and published as a part of a partnership with Mizna, the notebook will also be available as a print issue this summer, including pieces exclusive to that format. Continue reading work published in this series here.

litany for sarah

alight aloft
prism refracting rainbow
joy is a superhero’s cape

exile exhilarate
in so many photos 
your smile is radiant

sight incite
i like your round glasses
your face friend & lover

transcend acscend
the heavens are more 
beautiful than earth

requisite exquisite
to need sky
because you are sun

forgive forgive
the world is crueler
without you in it

rupture rapture
we are from god
& to her we return