I have an enemy
and it doesn’t need weapons.
It lives inside me,
eats without leaving teeth marks,
kills without leaving a body.
If it were a bullet,
you’d hear it.
If it were blood,
you’d believe me.
You’d press your hands to my chest
and call it real.
But this wound is invisible.
It bleeds in silence,
behind my ribs,
where I keep my breathing polite
and my pain well-behaved.
I am bleeding
where no one looks.
Dying
where no one thinks to check.
I stand upright.
I function.
I smile.
And somewhere inside me,
something keeps spilling out
with no proof
it was ever there.
Ariana Afrin Emu is a 22-year-old poet currently working on her debut collection, Doesn’t Make Any Sense. Her work has been featured in multiple online journals, including Poetry Potion, Cold Moon Journal, Screaming Cicadas, Mawbiz , Smallworldcity and others. Ariana’s writing explores love, loss, identity, and longing through emotionally raw, lyrical storytelling that blurs the line between memory and imagination.