A Unique Collaboration of Poetry and Art by Shahid Abbas and Rose Abordo O'Hara

A Unique Collaboration of Poetry and Art by Shahid Abbas and Rose Abordo O'Hara

A Vision of an Angel in the Mirror

Poem by Shahid Abbas

 Artwork by Rose Abordo O'Hara

She sits

inside a red wound of silk,

stitched to the silence

like a rose nailed to midnight.

The mirror does not reflect.

It remembers.

A second woman

breathes beneath the glass

all pulse,

all phantom,

all unfinished thunder.

Her black hair

falls like burned prayers

through the ribs of the dark.

And those eyes

two feral lanterns

starving for a name

older than language.

Outside,

the world applauds her beauty

with porcelain hands.

Inside,

she is peeling centuries

from the walls of herself.

Every gesture trembles.

Every breath

drags a cemetery of memories

through the throat of the room.

She touches the mirror

as if touching

the border between body and soul.

As if loneliness

were a door

still learning how to open.

The glass listens.

The glass knows

how many women

have drowned smiling

inside their own reflections.

She is not dressing herself.

She is excavating

the ruins of a hidden language.

Not vanity.

Resurrection.

Somewhere behind her silence,

dead hours bloom again

dust-lit corridors,

half-lived desires,

voices with broken wings.

She wants to speak

with the version of herself

the world never survived long enough to meet.

And the room grows heavier

with unsaid things.

Even her sadness

has another sadness

sleeping beneath it.

What a terrifying holiness

to meet yourself

without the permission of illusion.

The mirror shivers.

So does the woman inside it.

Yet still

she keeps looking.

Because somewhere

between shadow and skin,

between memory and marrow,

between the ache and the echo,

her lost self

is waiting

like fire waiting for oxygen.

And tonight,

in this mute cathedral of red silk,

she is almost close enough

to touch her own soul.

Moonlight over Solitude

Poem by Shahid Abbas

Artwork by Rose Abordo O'Hara

The moon forgot

how to remain white.

It burned itself

into a wound of orange silence.

A woman sits there

not broken,

just slowly disappearing

from her own language.

Her hands know

what her lips cannot translate.

Night leans beside her

like an exhausted witness.

The river keeps moving,

but even water

sounds tired tonight.

Some griefs

do not scream.

They rust quietly

inside the ribs.

The stars above

look feverish.

As if the sky itself

caught her sadness

by infection.

Nothing here is asleep.

Not the stones.

Not the air.

Not the unfinished ache

folded inside her shoulders.

Loneliness speaks first:

look at me.

I stayed

when everyone else

became memory.

And she almost answers.

Almost.

But sorrow has swallowed

the architecture of speech.

Even light

arrives fractured here.

Red.

Burnt gold.

Dying amber.

Colors once meant life.

Now they resemble

old bruises

on the body of evening.

The moon hangs above

like a cracked promise.

Beautiful.

Useless.

Somewhere beyond this frame

the world is sleeping normally.

People breathing softly.

Dreaming ordinary dreams.

While here

a woman keeps negotiating

with silence

as if silence

were the last living thing

that still remembers her name.

Hidden Beauty

Poem by Shahid Abbas

Artwork by Rose Abordo O'Hara

They named it modesty.

I named it survival.

Between the world and me

not a wall,

a threshold of splintered memory.

I stand half-visible.

Not incomplete.

Curated.

My silence

is not emptiness.

It is an archive.

Poets fractured their metaphors

at the edge of my face.

Empires loosened their crowns

for less than my absence.

Do not mistake

my lowered eyes

for surrender.

They are exhausted galaxies

refusing another invasion of light.

I have seen

how greed rehearses tenderness.

How society translates women

into consumable grammar.

A smile.

A body.

A temporary religion.

Yet my soul remains

uncolonized.

Inside me

corridors of unnamed weather.

Velvet catastrophes.

Cathedrals built from restrained screams.

I carry elegance

like a concealed wound.

My veil

is not fabric.

It is philosophy.

Only the spiritually literate

can read its syntax.

There are extinct languages

buried near my lips.

Dead constellations

stitched beneath my skin.

No historian

will decode them completely.

I was taught

to become softness.

To become bread.

To become something breakable

for communal hunger.

But I learned instead

the dangerous art

of remaining whole.

My character

a locked garden

after the storm.

My dignity

a candle

protecting its own flame

from applauding winds.

And love

that voiceless animal

still trembles inside me,

chained by inherited prohibitions.

Some nights

I hide even from myself.

Not from fear.

From preservation.

I am still negotiating

with old griefs.

Still inviting abandoned hours

to sit beside me

and explain

why pain always arrives

wearing familiar faces.

This world calls itself civilized

while teaching women

the mathematics of disappearance.

Speak softer.

Walk smaller.

Need less.

Endure beautifully.

But my existence

was never designed

for reduction.

I am not difficult to love.

Only difficult to possess.

And perhaps

that is the real scandal.

Listen carefully

beneath these silences

entire revolutions breathe.

One day

my hidden beauty

will no longer hide.

Not because the world deserves it.

Because I finally will.

Shahid Abbas 

Shahid Abbas from Tandlianwala, Faisalabad, Pakistan is an accomplished international modernist, contemporary poet, literary figure, and educator whose work reflects a deep appreciation for human emotions, spirituality, love, and the transformative power of words. His poetry carries a contemplative and lyrical quality, exploring the inner landscapes of the human heart while connecting personal experiences with universal themes.

He is the author of Words from Nature. Shahid is also the co-author of Verses of Meraki, a collaborative poetry collection celebrating creativity, emotion, and the beauty of artistic expression. The book’s second international edition was published by BI Book Press, India, further extending his literary collaboration across borders. Another book he co-authored is We Speak in Syllables. His works were already translated into more than 10 different languages.

Through his poetry and international literary engagements, Shahid Abbas continues to contribute to the global literary community, building bridges between cultures through the shared language of poetry.

Rose Abordo O'Hara

“As an artist, I want my artworks to speak not only for me, but for every one” - Rose Abordo O'Hara

Rose Abordo O'Hara is an ardent art lover. She lived a life yearning her childhood passion of being an Artist. But when the time comes for her to decide what her future be. She went to a Nursing School, instead of Art School. After she graduated and passed the Board Examination in Nursing, she migrated to New York City and worked as a Registered Nurse at New York Hospital. Here she attended Art Classes under some established and well known New York artists and did very well . After a while , with the pressure of being a nurse and raising a family, her passion for art took a back seat, she put aside her easel, palette and brushes.

After her retirement from nursing, she moved to Naples, Florida from New York with her husband. Then her Art Journey took off with a boom. After almost decades of interrupted passion in arts. Rose found herself immersed on painting, contented in her comfort zone. The artist believes that love of beauty is a taste and that creation of beauty is an art.

Her artwork is diverse which includes portrait paintings, landscapes, seascapes and but mostly figurative paintings. Her acrylic on canvas paintings with layers of bold brush strokes and vibrant colors, convey awesome, inspiring and sublime characteristics.