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Ladan Osman was born in Somalia and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She earned a BA from Otterbein University and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. In 2014 her poetry collection The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimomy won the annual Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. Osman lives in Chicago.

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Life Choices
Heartache &
Loss

God/Religion/
Spirituality

Solitude

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Ordinary Heaven

by Ladan Osman
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I arrange a doll in a chair and wait for her to speak.

I want to say “Be!” to her but am an ordinary soul.
I watch for the fold under her eye to twitch.


I have many dreams, I say to her.
In my dreams I am better than myself.
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