I think this is a challenge well completed.

I actually think this is amazing.. I will comment more when I have more time, but you nailed the challenge!

The amount of imagery and emotion in how you tell us about the components of August is so intriguing

I really don't know how else to comment but I'll try! Each part added to the whole and it strongly expressed to me the depth of August... the little secrets and thoughts it consists of that outsiders may overlook, especially how it impacts your home and the areas you grew up in or are around. Reminded me of every reminder you get in the city and of this person, how reminiscent they are all and how they all haunt your memory at the same time, not necessarily separate and picked apart.

Love how specific you got with the "teaching us not
to buy cigarettes and smuggled dreams
from cheap markets."

as well as how you mentioned poetry entering a heart then drying there, like it stays stagnant in the heat, doesn't move on but maybe that also means it is caked in there, so it remains.

Absolutely beautiful Noura and you interwove the prompts you did use flawlessly! (noticed a few phrases weren't in your poem). I just felt like this was your voice capturing that nostalgia, desire, freedom, memory... you have this painful beauty of words that paint this picture of what August is truly like. Amazing write I say as well, I don't think it's terrible at all, you capture a lot in these lines.

Wow, I absolutely LOVED this poem Noura! It is so very perfectly happy, sad, young, old and true! The great art of a good poem, in my opinion, is leaving your reader wanting more, wanting to truly understand and you do that perfectly with this piece. I almost want to investigate, why August? Great that you have the skill to leave the reader with their own imaginations!

"having you
beside me is a dream
I can't bring myself to have."

There were many many many lines in your poem which made me stop and think about what you were saying but these words in particular took my breath away. I love it when simple words, unpretentious words can express raw human emotion and that is exactly what you do here. AND you do it, ever so poetically! It really hit home with me and made me reflect on my own personal experience so a i thank you wholeheartedly for that.

undoubtedly a 5/5 from me and a congratulations for a fabulous, deserving win!

Wow!!! This poem is beautiful!!! Very well written and yet, with such imagery. You really nailed it in writing this one. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Keep up the great writing. A great poem indeed.

5/5