Alma Dubia

ALMA DUBIA

Os raios solares
Que ultrapassam a janela
Até parecem
Partes de mim
Que querem ser libertadas
Não sei de onde vem
Esse desejo
De ser diferente
Mas fazer parte ao mesmo tempo.

Quero ser aqueles raios
Que ultrapassam a janela
E se sobressaem.
Quero ser aquela flor
No meio do deserto.
E mesmo assim,
Continuarei sendo
Uma gota no oceano.

Gabriela Helena de Oliveira Borges was born on November 25, 2000, in a city in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil, called Franca.  She is the third and youngest child of a fierce and kind couple.  She was educated in private secondary schools and it was in the first of these, Escola de Arte Criativa Toulouse Lautrec, that she discovered the magic of art and developed her charm for writing, always with the support of her family.  For two consecutive years she won first place in the school poetry competition and she never stopped writing.  She currently attends hight school at Novo Colégio, in her home city.

SUSPECT SOUL

The sunbeams
That transcend the window
Almost resemble
Parts of me
That want to be freed
I don’t know from whence it comes
This desire
To be different
But to be a part at the same time.

I want to be those beams
That transcend the window
And that become visible.
I want to be that flower
In the middle of the desert.
Even so,
I will continue being
A drop in the ocean.

Tucson, Arizona born-and-raised, Shelby London Salemi practices capoeira angola and is earning her MFA in Writing at the University of California San Diego.  Her writing has appeared in the online journal Spiral Orb and the 2016 print anthology The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide.  She is working on her first novel.