The Anatomy of Dawn by Saleha Najeeb

One Poem Only · Jan 17, 2026 · 2m

The Anatomy of Dawn

Saleha Najeeb

Do not mistake the smile for light.

It is merely how we hide the mourning

of what never had a funeral.

Grief, it does not arrive or leave,

it resides,

like a second pulse beneath the one we claim to feel.

I have carried it, you know

the quiet dissonance of appearing alive

while the soul rehearses its own absence.

There are days I speak,

but every word drips through a sieve of silence,

and you, perhaps,

know this kind of breathing too.

Yet, even stillness grows restless.

Even darkness remembers the shape of dawn.

So I began

not running,

but returning

to the…