Khaled Mattawa offers us a tragically beautiful look into his soul with his poem titled Terrorist. The piece sets off painting a grisly conflict scene in which fire crossed skies and streets decorated in "arabesques of strewn corpses" are an all to familiar alternating occurrence that continuously wear down his humanity. 

     The affect of savage death is universal in its finality. However, the value of a life is subjectively situational and culturally debatable. Mattawa does an interesting job depicting the denizens of destruction as his twin. Birthed from and into the shared condition "Everything leads me back, unified and cellular, to the womb we shared." Demonstrates this conflicting rubber banding that no matter what direction life takes him "everything" leads him back. Beginning with nonexistence to birth, we run away from nonexistence as fast and hard as we can, until we get to the end and the rubber band and it tightens, pulling us back to nonexistence.

   "Rubbing the ashes of his bones unto my face I become his blue screams at birth." is a powerfully connecting statement, ashes paint his face blue amalgamating his existence with their death. As he awaits his own death, he counts it down with each breath "Every breath I inhale is the cold wind that makes us embrace like statues of eternal lovers. In every exhale there's a wisp of silver smoke from the warm clay that binds us." From the coldness of death to the biblical reference to creation. We all breath in death, breath out life. Until we fill ourselves with death.