With that question, the two of us had a long conversation about whether language is a tool in our hands or we in its hands.

Language is a double-edged sword that can imprison or set us free.

After a long journey with wars, moving, and exile, life has grounded me like coffee beans. My mother used to say that 'coffee beans have less value as whole beans.' They must be painfully grounded to become this delicious, stimulating, and awakening drink called 'coffee'.

Language is the beginning and the end of what makes us human. The language we do remains alive way after we depart this world. Language is in our mothers’ first lullaby, the first time we tell someone ‘I love you’, and we often talk about the significance of someone’s last words before they died.

I do not even agree with classifying writing as 'classic' or 'contemporary'. Great writing is contemporary regardless of when it was written. It is always timely. It communicates with readers across time and space. A great piece of writing is contemporary whether written yesterday or ten centuries ago.

As our knowledge increases, so does our desire to maintain silence and hide from the world whose face is washed every morning with the blood of countless innocent people.

We both found much more truth in poems than in the rhetoric of those who write to flirt with the power of their time, or those who only speak the 'truth' once the word 'former' becomes attached to their job titles. We both believed that powerful writing is a combination of madness and reason, observation and courage.

I often struggle with every word I try to put on paper: there is always a voice within me screaming, ‘It is all useless! The world has gone totally deaf and blind!’But then another voice comes: ‘Sitting in a dark corner and closing your door and windows is also useless!’ And so, until the world decides to open its ears and its eyes, do I have any choice but to bleed on the endless snows of my blank pages?

I dedicate these poems to all the people who were prematurely cut from their times and places. To each human soul that wilted and lost its fragrance in exile.