Whispers of Wisdom

17/09/2026

The Inheritance We Owe

What we leave at the table
should be more than crumbs.
It should be a world
where no mother counts coins
before buying bread,
where a child can open a cupboard
without learning the sound of disappointment.

I have seen hunger
wear many faces.
A boy pretending not to notice
the lunch his classmates unwrap,
a father drinking water
so his children can eat,
an old woman cutting one tomato
into enough pieces for everyone.

Yet I have also seen
something hunger cannot easily destroy:
the quiet invention of survival,
a neighbor dividing her flour,
a baker setting aside bread,
a stranger paying for a meal
without asking a name.

These gestures rarely make history.
No monument records them.
No newspaper announces
the hand that filled a bowl.
But somewhere,
a child sleeps that night
with a little less fear.

Perhaps humanity survives
through such unnoticed exchanges,
a portion saved,
a door opened,
a meal shared,
a worker paid fairly,
a field protected
for hands not yet born.

Let us build a future
where generosity is not required
to repair what injustice has broken;
where every person can earn bread
without surrendering dignity;
where work is valued,
where harvests reach kitchens,
where children inherit opportunities
instead of debts and empty plates.

Let the farmer's grain
travel farther than hunger.
Let the fisherman's catch
feed a family before it becomes profit.
Let surplus become supper,
not rubbish.
Let abundance learn
to recognize its responsibility.

And let us teach our children
that poverty is not a person's identity,
that an empty pocket
never means an empty worth,
that the smallest human life
deserves room beneath the same sky.

Years may carry our names away.
Buildings may crumble.
Markets will change.
Even the hands that planted today's food
will become dust.

But if one generation
leaves the next
more bread than bitterness,
more justice than fear,
more doors than walls,
then something precious
will have crossed time.

Not wealth.
Not power.
A human promise,
that nobody should have to
prove they deserve
to eat,
to work,
to hope,
to belong.

And perhaps this is
the inheritance worth leaving:
a table with enough places,
a world with fewer wounds,
and a human heart
still willing
to make room
for another.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Nadica Evdokija Lekic Najib Rofa Sifri Ola Sheha Saima Ali نسمات إيمانية Human Rights Watch Nony Monica-Maria Mare سماح مشعل Nada Ezzat Younes ناصيف سامر الكاظمي Maria Diez Garcia الاتحاد العربي في الجمهورية التونسية Low Kay Hwa

15/09/2026

Every Crumb Counts

At the end of dinner,
a child stays behind
with a small piece of bread
pressed between two fingers.

No one notices.
The plates have gone quiet,
the glasses hold only
the faint scent of water,
and outside,
a street sweeper gathers
what the evening has forgotten.

The child does not throw it away.
She walks to the balcony
where a sparrow waits
on the rusted railing,
its head tilted
toward the kitchen.

One crumb falls.
Then another.
For a moment,
the bird and the child
share the same silence—
not charity,
not pity,
just hunger
recognizing hunger.

Downstairs,
a restaurant worker
scrapes untouched rice
from a tray into a separate pan.

He has learned
not to call food waste.
He calls it
what it is:
someone's missing meal.
In another neighborhood,
a woman saves vegetable stems
in a cloth bag,
turns yesterday's lentils
into today's supper,
and keeps the smallest potatoes
for the morning.

Her hands know
what abundance forgets.
A farmer bends over a field
after harvest,
searching the earth
for what the machines left behind.
He gathers grain
grain by grain.
Not because
the field is poor,
but because
he remembers being poor.

Somewhere,
a market closes
under bright electric lights.
Boxes of fruit remain,
too soft,
too small,
too late for sale.
Before the doors are locked,
someone carries them out
to a community kitchen.

No speech is made.
Knives simply begin
their patient work.
Peels fall.
Seeds are saved.
Soup begins to simmer.
And by midnight,
what might have become rubbish
has become warmth
passing from bowl to bowl.

Perhaps change does not always arrive
with banners or applause.
Perhaps it begins
when a hand pauses
above a bin.
When a restaurant measures
what it prepares.

When a household learns
the difference between
enough and excess.
When a farmer's harvest
is treated as more than merchandise.

When food is seen
not merely as something purchased,
but as rain,
soil,
labor,
time,
and somebody's tired back
carried all the way
to our table.

Years from now,
let a child grow up
without knowing
the shame of an empty kitchen.
Let that child learn
to leave the world
a little fuller
than it was received.

And if one crumb remains
after everyone has eaten,
may it never be meaningless.
May it remind us
that hunger is not far away,

and that a just world
can begin
with something as small
as refusing
to waste
what another human being
might have needed.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Human Rights Watch Whispers of Wisdom Steve Mugo Poetry & Arts Stephen Lee Pow Saima Ali Nada Ezzat Younes Nony Monica-Maria Mare Nasreen Syed Georgina Robb

14/09/2026

Tomorrow Has No Empty Plate

Before sunrise,
a mother rinses the last cup
and listens to the quiet kitchen.
No pot is singing.
No knife is touching a board.
Yet beside the window
she places three small plates,
as if tomorrow has already arrived.
Her youngest draws a sun
on the back of an old receipt,
then adds a table beneath it,
four chairs,
a loaf in the middle.

He does not draw hunger.
He has never been taught
to give emptiness a shape.
Across the road,
a baker lifts the shutters.
Flour dust settles on his sleeves
like pale morning snow.
He counts the loaves,
not the coins,
and sets aside the bread
that will travel farther
than his own doorway.

In another country,
a girl carries water
past a field turning green.
Her schoolbook is tucked beneath her arm.
She stops beside a fence
where the first tomatoes
hold the sunlight in their skins.

Someone planted them
before she was born.
Someone believed
a stranger's child
might one day eat them.

This is how a future changes:
not with a trumpet,
but with a seed saved from the market,
a wage paid before the rent,
a clinic open after dusk,
a school bench kept warm
for the child who almost disappeared
from the roll.

It changes when a worker
can bring his hands home
without bringing hunger with them.
When a mother can divide an orange
without calculating
which child should receive
the larger half.

When help arrives
without asking a person's dignity
to stand outside the door.
Years from now,
children will open cupboards
without first measuring
what is missing.

They will complain
that the bread is cold,
leave a crust on the plate,
and run outside
with crumbs on their shirts.
Let them.
Let no child learn
the arithmetic of hunger.

Let no father hide
an empty pocket
inside a closed fist.
Let no mother become
an expert at saying,
“I'm not hungry.”

And when tomorrow's children
sit around a crowded table,
may they never know
how many hands once worked
to make that ordinary moment possible.

Perhaps then
the greatest monument
humanity can build
will need no stone.
Only a table
under an open window,
a child reaching for bread,
and enough left over
for whoever comes late.
Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Nadica Evdokija Lekic Najib Rofa Sifri Ola Sheha Saima Ali Nada Ezzat Younes همسات عبير Satter Ali

08/09/2026

The Hands That Refused To Close

After the final whistle,
the arena emptied by degrees—
first the shouting,
then the shoes,
then the children dragging
their plastic flags through the aisles.
At midnight,
only the cleaners remained.

Their footsteps crossed the concrete
and came back to them,
thin echoes
from twenty thousand empty seats.
The air still carried
the sour sweetness of stale popcorn,
b**r,
and the smoke of victory
already cooling in the rafters.

Nadia found a paper cup
beneath Row G.
Inside it,
three coins
and a child's blue marble.
She slipped the marble
into her pocket.

Not for herself.
At the service door,
Samuel, the old groundsman,
was counting coins beneath a yellow bulb.
He counted once.
Then again.
The vending machine
asked for one more.
He laughed softly
and put the coins away.

"I'll wait."
Nadia did not ask
what he meant.
She went downstairs
to the staff kitchen.
Twelve sandwiches
lay beneath plastic wrap,
their edges already drying.

She placed them
on a steel tray.
Then she opened the door.
One by one,
the night's invisible people arrived:
the woman who scrubbed
the players' showers,

the security guard
with a bandaged thumb,
the boy sweeping popcorn
into a black bag,
Samuel,
still holding his coins.

Nobody stood at the head
of the table.
Nobody counted
who had brought what.
The sandwiches disappeared
without ceremony.
The boy saved half of his
inside his coat.

"For my sister."
A silence passed
through the room.
Not pity.
Something quieter.
Nadia wrapped another sandwich
in a napkin
and pushed it toward him.

Outside,
the arena had become
what empty buildings become,
vast,
cold,
and strangely honest.
The scoreboard still showed
the winning number.

No one looked at it.
They were busy passing oranges,
pouring tea,
moving chairs closer.
By two,
there was room
for everyone.

By three,
the floor was littered
with crumbs.
By four,
Samuel had stopped counting.
Morning entered slowly
through the high windows,
touching the empty seats
one row at a time.

Nadia returned
the blue marble
to the boy's hand.
He closed his fingers around it.
Then someone reached
across the table
for the last piece of bread.

Another hand broke it.
Another hand received half.
And another.
Until what remained
was too small to divide,
so they divided
the table instead,

making room
for one more person.
Outside,
the arena waited
for another crowd,
another winner,
another night of thunder.
But beneath its silent roof,
where the echoes had finally died,
a circle of hands
had learned something
the scoreboard never could:

an empty place
does not become full
when more people enter,
it becomes full
when no hand
has to close
around its share.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Nadica Evdokija Lekic Najib Rofa Sifri Ola Sheha Saima Ali نسمات إيمانية غزل غزل Nada Ezzat Younes The Purplegypsy jinn Youn

06/09/2026

06/09/2026

The House Where Bread Returned

(Recovery After Deprivation)

For years,
the kitchen knew only the sound
of an empty cupboard closing.
The plates stayed stacked,
cleaner than necessary,
while winter leaned
against the cracked door.

Then one morning,
a sack of flour arrived,
not like a miracle,
but like work finally bearing fruit.
The mother poured it slowly,
touching the white dust
with hands that had forgotten
the weight of abundance

By noon,
bread began to brown.
Its warmth entered
the coldest corners:
the windowsill,
the patched coat,
the child's careful silence.

No one celebrated loudly.
They simply ate,
and after each piece
the room seemed to grow.
The youngest saved a crust
for tomorrow,
then laughed
when his mother told him
there would be more.

Outside,
the old road carried its dust onward.
Inside,
a loaf cooled on the table,
and the house learned again
that having enough
is not excess,
it is the quiet return
of tomorrow.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan

Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Nadica Evdokija Lekic Najib Rofa Sifri Saima khan Forget Me Not/Raising My Husband. Saima Ali أكاديمية الزهراء الأديب القاص سامر ناصيف الكاظمي Lila Layal Georgina Robb MAlsaad Alremih

04/09/2026

A Table Big Enough

Creating Inclusive Communities
Someone brings a chair
from the room next door.
Someone else moves the salt
so every hand can reach it.

At first,
there is not enough,
not enough bread,
not enough room,
not enough certainty
that strangers can become neighbours.

Then an old woman tears her portion
into smaller pieces
without making anyone
thank her.
A child arrives late,
mud on his shoes,
silence in his pockets.

They make space.
No one asks
which road brought him hungry.
The soup grows thinner,
yet warmer,
as names begin to travel
across the table.

Here,
dignity is not a special seat.
It is the simple understanding
that no one should stand outside
while others are eating.

By evening,
the table is scarred with use,
crowded with elbows,
empty bowls,
laughter,
and the crumbs of many languages.

Outside,
the world remains enormous.
Inside,
someone pulls up
one more chair.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Human Rights Watch Jinn Youn Nadica Evdokija Lekic الاتحاد العربي الدولي للشعر والثقافة في الجمهورية العراقية Saima khan سماح مشعل Lila Layal MAlsaad Alremih أكاديمية الزهراء الأديب القاص سامر ناصيف الكاظمي

03/09/2026

The Silent Debt

(Society’s Debt to the Poor)

There is a bill
no envelope delivers.
It waits beneath bridges,
in the cold cup of a beggar,
in the school shoes
a mother repairs with thread
until thread becomes thinner
than her hope.
We pass the debt each morning
without signing our names.

The baker throws away bread
too old for his window,
while, three streets away,
a boy learns the smell of hunger
before he learns geography.

No bank records this.
No government clock
counts the hours
a father spends choosing
which child will eat first.

Yet the poor keep giving.
The woman with one blanket
makes room for another body.
The old man,
whose pockets hold only keys
to a room he no longer owns,
shares his tea.

Perhaps dignity
is not what poverty loses,
but what poverty protects
against every attempt
to take the last piece.
One day,
we will understand
that charity was never enough.

The debt was ours
from the beginning.
And somewhere tonight,
a child will place
an empty bowl beside the window,
not knowing
that the whole world
has been asked
to fill it.

Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Stephen Lee Pow Chan Hin Weng David Nadica Evdokija Lekic Najib Rofa Sifri Saima khan Saima Ali الاتحاد العربي الدولي للشعر والثقافة في الجمهورية العراقية Lee Hwa Jewellery سماح مشعل

01/09/2026

No Harvest for Greed

Before sunrise,
the workers enter the fields
with bread wrapped in cloth
and yesterday's tiredness
still folded beneath their eyes.

Their hands know the soil
more intimately than the men
who own its horizon.
At noon,
a child counts coins
while trucks leave heavy
with the season's abundance.

Nothing grows alone.
The wheat remembers rain,
the rain remembers rivers,
and every full granary
contains the fingerprints
of those who returned home
with empty pockets.

One evening,
an old woman saves a seed
from her meagre meal
and presses it into earth.
Greed may purchase the harvest,
but never the spring.
Poet
Zulfiqar Hamdam Awan
Saima khan Saima Khan Saima Ali Steve Mugo Stephen Lee Pow Jesica Chavez jinn youn

27/08/2026

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