Rome Smaoui

July 2025 | fiction

The Tender Earth

Our mothers die quickly. When we grieve, time rushes out of us like old light. They lowered the body into the black end of the ground. All the worms turned, delighted. The sun threw itself on the dirt like a lover returning. I couldn’t help but sink after her. I went in like a delirious fly. My body thunked with the weight of all its years. I was made of gold. They didn’t pull me out; a mutual understanding flossed between their silence. One hand after the other tossed the tender earth over us, the dirt a showering of black stars. I curled my head on my mother’s dead shoulder and pressed against her like a newborn shadow. A year later, I emerged from that grave, a thousand sheets of air driving though me. I could feel her moving beneath my feet like a barge on the river. But I adored the sight, the sun with its throat on display, yellow on either end of this terrible world.

Rome Smaoui

Rome Smaoui is a Tunisian poet and writer born in 2003. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, SMOKE Magazine, Litbreak Magazine, Rejected Literature, and other places. She has recently received her Bachelor’s in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. Upon graduating, she was awarded the 2024 George Gissing Memorial Prize for her Fiction and the 2024 Alun Lewis Prize for her Poetry.