Some things do not leave when they are gone. They remain in a cup on the table, an empty side of a bed, a road bending out of sight, a dress that still carries a memory, photographs lowered into boxes. Death of a Poet follows a poet through love, place, memory, silence, and finally loss. Written across several years—and culminating in an intensely personal sequence composed during the summer of 2026—these poems move from beaches and cities to bedrooms, gardens, abandoned rooms, rain, rivers, and the ordinary objects that become unbearable when someone disappears from a life.

I used to avoid documentaries about the Arab and Muslim world. Partly because I felt I already knew the struggles too well. But mostly because I knew what they would do to me emotionally. There are only so many times one can watch one’s people bleed before “awareness” begins to feel like self-inflicted pain. The last one I watched was…

Forty films in six months. Some were entertaining. Some were unforgettable. A few completely rewired how I think about humanity, power, science, art, love, and oppression. If 2025 was the year I watched stories about identity, then 2026 has become the year of institutions—how they shape us, fail us, and sometimes destroy us. There is a strange comfort in sitting in a dark theater while the world outside seems determined to burn itself down.