Smile

A smile is a precarious thing. Thought to be the expression of happiness, it can hide away other things. A shy smile is to let that blue-eyed boy next to you know you like listening to him talk. A broad smile is to let the shy girl know you think she’s lovely. A shared smile is to connect over a joke, a feeling, an understanding. These are the ones known to everyone. But there are those who use smiles in a different way. A plastic smile, to let...

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A Bulb to Brighten

Like many of us try to deny, I am insecure. Maybe it isn’t for the specific flaws another person might have as theirs but just like everyone, I have insecurities.  It is impossible to perfect yourself if you are not even aware of who you are. Everyone has their own light bulb inside of them. You cannot be someone else. In other words, you cannot steal a replica of another human being’s bulb and try to shine it as bright as they are capable...

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Chains of Glass- Part 1

Sometimes, several times, I think I saw evil in me. I hadn’t grown up in a bubble; I was raised in an enormous oblong glass box. The extraordinary thing about this glass box was that I could see everything of the world without. But to that world, I was completely invisible. The box was impermeable, it was impossible for me to shine in the radiance that showered around it. The glass simply reflected its bright glares. None of the beams...

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Goodbye

The Goodbye Girl by Olga Noes They looked at each other with a sad face. They were overwhelmed with a mixture of emotions, a little happiness with a partial sadness, an excitement with nervousness. It was time to say good bye to the person she had respected all her life. He was the one who had supported her at all times, held her hand and guided her towards the path of light. And today, she had to leave this very person. She was filled with...

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This is NOT how it is

When I was growing up, the unspoken philosophy of Egyptian society was “this is how it is.” As an Egyptian living overseas, I was constantly exposed to the sickening caste system and the chasm it created between the rich and the poor. While many Egyptians struggled to make ends meet, others drowned in luxuries like Lexus cars and ski trips to Switzerland. Whenever a naive child, not yet touched by life’s cruelty, asked, “Why?”, the response...

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Tick-tock

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once” –Albert Einstein  Frozen Time by Qiang Huang Time has endless definitions and meanings, but it has only one use, to measure. Time is seconds, hours, breaths, heartbeats, moon’s phases; you can use any unit for it, but its sole purpose is to organize our lives, to schedule them, and we are forever bound together in an hourglass from where we can’t escape but...

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