The HyperTexts

Elham Sarikhani

Elham Sarikhani is a writer and thinker whose work dwells in the borderlands of shadow and light. She explores exile, silence, memory, and the fierce beauty hidden within suffering. Blending lyric intensity with reflective clarity, her poems and prose move between the intimate and the collective, tracing wounds, reckonings, and the fragile endurance of hope. With a voice both raw and contemplative, she writes for those who refuse false healing and seek instead the difficult clarity of truth.



Another Day, in the Language of the Abyss

I never meant to stay alive this long.
No, life was never meant to be an inheritance.
It was a wager,
and I would have gladly lost it years ago.

It has been a wild ride, yes,
but not the kind the poets sing about.
It was a ride through storms that had no sky,
through rooms where even gods refused to knock.

I have been beaten
by days that were too long,
and nights that were too honest.

And yet, through it all,
I kept my dignity
not the dignity of pride or reputation,
but the kind that survives in secret, unobserved.

I kept my curiosity,
not as a virtue,
but as the only lantern
I could afford in the dark.

I am tired now.
Tired in the marrow,
in the weight of my breath.

I deserve my exit,
not as a gift,
but as a simple, overdue wage.

There is no regret.
There is no remorse.
I have been enough.

I have stood in the fire without flinching,
and that is a life,
whether or not the world knew how to name it.

And yet

this morning,
when the light came bleeding through the blinds like an accusation,
I opened my eyes.

And I lived.
Another day.

Not because I was rescued,
but because I have not yet decided
that the abyss
should have the last word.



Vow of Love

I do not cling from hunger;
I offer my full presence.

I speak what is true,
but never with the blade of contempt.

I remain
when remaining dissolves
the self I cherish.

I depart without hatred;
your story stays safe
within my silence.

If my truth shatters
what you built,
I will help rebuild
if you wish it so.



The Night I Became the Monster

In the trembling alleys of childhood,
where the sirens of war bled through prayer,
I learned to dread the silence between dreams,
for in that silence the monsters marched.
Grotesque, endless, they passed before me,
their shadows clung to my waking breath,
and I, a small soul,
hid trembling behind the brittle laws of the righteous.
Yet one night,
a strange fire stirred in me,
a hunger, a defiance,
perhaps even the whisper of God’s cruelty.
I stepped from hiding,
arms open,
and the monsters entered me,
not to tear me apart,
but to dwell,
to become my marrow,
my secret strength.
From that hour I understood:
evil is not the Other,
it is the mirror refused.
The abyss does not kill;
it waits,
asking if you dare embrace its gaze.
Call me monster, if you must.
I am no longer afraid.
The darkness within me is not my chains,
it is my freedom,
my proof that I am whole.



The Beast’s Final Bargain

Every beast knows its price;
wisdom is to pause before paying.
I was born without a tomorrow.
The world sold futures like cheap icons,
but I had no patience for their painted saints.
The beast in me saw through it,
only the raw breath of now was real,
each day a solitary rebirth,
each hour a small crucifixion.
But to live this way is to live beside a cliff.
The beast does not only hunger for life;
it dreams of release.
One breath and I could vanish,
the whisper is always there,
a door just ajar at the edge of thought,
inviting me to step through.
Others weave their lives with plans,
I sit at the table with nothing but the present,
and the knowledge that I could rise and leave forever.
This is my freedom,
and my torment.
For decades I have burned like this,
intensity as prayer,
exhaustion as sacrament.
Each dawn a wager:
stay or go,
grasp the day or surrender it.
And still I remain,
my beast crouched in the shadows of my ribs,
pulling both toward life and toward the abyss.
This is the truth polite men cannot bear:
to live fully is to be always near the void.
The more you seize the moment,
the louder its silence calls you home.
Yet I endure.
Each breath a small rebellion,
each step a refusal of the final exit.
One day I will pass through that door,
and when I do, it will not be defeat,
but the last gesture of a life lived without remainder.
Until then,
I stand at the edge,
beast and man alike,
choosing life,
today and only today,
even as the void waits,
one breath away.



Look at Me Dance to My Exit

I have danced with my monsters,
with my saints,
with the shadows of every name I wore.
I no longer dance for applause,
this is the movement of a soul unbound.
All my contradictions,
the beast, the lover, the architect, the god,
circle me now,
not as enemies but as echoes.
I am whole. Look at me:
I dance without fear,
without control,
without needing to be understood.
The curtain falls, but not in defeat,
only in grace. This is my exit,
not a tragedy but a celebration.
I burn,
I bow,
I vanish,
leaving behind an echo
the universe will remember.



The Comedy of Goodbye

Love is an untimely guest,
it arrives uninvited,
builds its altar in your ribs,
then insists on tragedy at its exit.
No quiet departure for love;
it demands blood,
demands silence that lingers like smoke.
I met him in the theatre of my twenties,
where passion was currency
and slogans our only inheritance.
His eyes were like peace promised but never delivered,
his soul already tuned to the pitch of martyrdom.
Loving him was impractical,
like falling for a character already written for myth.
Every tragedy needs its villain.
Ours came on motorcycles,
not with speeches but knives.
They butchered him at noon
as though cutting out an overlong chapter.
I was there.
Before, during, after.
More than most ghosts can claim.
No orchestra swelled.
No cinematic farewell.
Just a hand on his chest,
his eyes staring past the edge of the screen
into whatever waits beyond the curtain.
Exit stage left.
Final act.
The heart that once beat for paranoia and poetry
was silent. I did not check his pulse.
I did not scream.
Wilde was right,
to die for one’s country is an old lie.
To die for an idea, older still.
And yet, was it not hilarious?
That freedom devoured its own believers
with such impeccable timing?
Grief is not dramatic.
It is tedious.
It sits with you in cafés,
follows you down the same street
where everything broke.
I never avoided that place,
to forget would be a worse insult
than remembering.
I skipped the funeral.
Funerals are theatre for the living,
a farce of flowers and borrowed prayers.
I’d already said goodbye when it mattered,
while he was still warm,
while blood still meant something.
Time does not heal.
It dresses wounds in lace
and calls it recovery.
So I moved forward not because I was healed
but because the alternative was absurd.
We all say goodbye eventually,
in unanswered texts,
doors closed too hard,
or in my case,
a boy bleeding on a street
where the revolution never came.
The tragedy was real.
But my God,
the timing, pure comedy.

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