Briefe an Haduwig - By Mayra Rana

Written By: MAYRA RANA

Category: Poetry-ballad style

Competition: Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Mayra Rana graces the Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 with her evocative ballad, "Briefe an Haduwig." This poignant piece echoes the haunting journey of a fallen angel, exploring themes of lost divinity, longing, and the eternal struggle between celestial duty and human emotion. As a participant from the poetry category, Mayra brings to life the ethereal and the mortal realms, offering a reflective and emotionally charged narrative that resonates deeply.

About the Work

"Briefe an Haduwig" immerses readers in the melancholic tale of an angel stripped of her celestial wings and grappling with the agony of lost divinity. The ballad weaves vivid imagery and a rich tapestry of emotions, capturing the angel's inner torment and longing for the unattainable. Mayra Rana's lyrical style and hauntingly beautiful prose create a narrative that is both ethereal and grounded in raw human emotion, inviting readers to ponder the price of love and the nature of true artistry.

Briefe an Haduwig

Original Submission by MAYRA RANA

Briefe an Haduwig

A ballad by Mayra Rana

Fallen angel, left to describe heaven

as just the golden within clouds,

each strip of sinew, each plume,

torn out of her wings,

now bare and stripped of ability,

the burning, sweet, aftertaste

of all the times she had soared,

still acid on her body

as she fell

down,

down,

swallowed by the sky that raised

above and out of her reach,

swallowed by the waves of ice she dropped into.

The impact left every bone in her body shattered,

the shards of her ribs ripping her lungs,

and she wished she wouldn't heal,

"Oh, curse angelicity,", she thought,"begone from me"

her mouth opening,

veins yearning,

for air that had already been snatched by the sea.

She had never felt hate for being an angel,

but now she couldn't find anything more agonizing,

than her connection to the celestial,

not even the way the ocean gently took

the breath out of her body,

and filled it with water instead.

But she still found her divinity

was leaving her heart more sore than drowning was.

And so she accepted it,

and she let her eyes go dark.

"Leave." The archangel had said,

empty, lunar eyes gazing up, not even pitiful enough

to look at her crumpled form

bleeding out infront of him

lips slit, eyes wide in fury, and in fear,

"Leave. And dare not let a mention of heaven fall from you,

lest you wish the angels to paint themselves with the like of your blood"

And his head didn't even tilt enough to catch the horror in her expression.

She had never seen the sky so dark.

The stars no longer called her closer,

they too, faded coldly as if for their disgust at her.

A million years and the sun will go

and she'll have to wait for that fateful hour

where she too will leave with the warmth of his rays.

Till then,

The only gold she can witness

is treasure found by foolish ephemerals.

Eyes open skywards,

close skywards,

and throughout the hours

of morn, noon, and eve, they revert skyward,

desperate to glimpse golden,

pathetically forbidden

from letting her love of airborne, find a way out of her lungs

and into her breath,

to whisper the one,

the isolated, the forbidden,

the single fondness

that she had remaining to take delight in.

She could only find love for the little bit of

the gold of heaven that had managed

to find their way into her eyes

after her first flight.

A piece of her beloved,

The one piece of heaven

the archangel had been unable to take away,

no matter how the angels tried to burn it out of her eyes,

her body writhing

under their merciless, divine hands.

And their relentless brutality had been to no cause,

the heaven in her pupils would not burn out

And so their ministrations slowed till none, and they stepped back

The gold still twinkling, teasing, infuriating them.

That piece of golden was now the lone meaning of love to her.

Till one love, turned to two.

When it happened? Well, not a clue.

And now her burden had doubled,

She loved now, not one, but two sweet desperations,

both far, far away.

And she, too damned to hold either to her mouth,

could only whisper nothing,

could only breathe out.

One unchanging love we know.

The other...

was a human.

A mere mortal boy.

"How foolish of me," she cried,

"I will see him grow and see him die!"

And back came that agony from the ocean,

Spreading heavily through her limbs.

But this time,

she didn't accept the pain,

she dared it..

And her eyes no longer closed skywards.

They flickered from one corner of vision

to another,

when sleep came hunting for her,

they rolled back in attempt to find

a trace

of the image of him,

lost from the first time her eyes

set upon him.

A trace of... golden?

And yet this golden she could see.

Oh, how the colour warmed her eyes in saccharine reunion.

Oh, how she had missed the gilt,

the golden,

after her's had been purloined from her.

Her wings, red, lush things,

that had whipped winds to storms,

was torn till skeletal,

courtesy of the Seraphim,

left unable to beat.

But this creature, this... human,

this boy, this.. mortal, to say the least,

oh, to his slow breaths,

her wings moved

as if she was in flight,

as if she was once again

in the blue and the gold,

not stranded to bare earth

as she was.

To her, his eyes held more stars than any constellation she had soared past.

His lips were sweeter than any rose of valentine,

So sweet that his name, even half spoken, when falling from her exhale,

Left the taste of sugar on her tongue.

Too sweet, too golden,

And so, she could only stop at half his name,

out of fear that, like her, his transient flesh

would be stolen away too.

Half a name... what can half a name hold?

More than you'd think.

Her blood vessels distended when his heart beat too close to hers.

Her fingers quivered as she brought the tip of her quill to parchment,

and the nib flowed as slow and as full as poison in wine-

Too much and it could kill,

so she had to stop at half.

Later, if you'd read it,

you'd find a poem.

Incomplete,

but a poem nonetheless.

The pungent smell of her own blood run sour,

stung at her senses as she woke day after day,

finding herself strewn on across the rug, limbs twitching,

unable to see,

skin cold, eyes rolled back,

whispering out his name,

and her eyes kept rolling,

kept searching,

till the stars in her visions were suns,

bloody, large orbs, no golden in sight.

Weak, fragile,

these are not words any poem written has explained angels to be,

so I will be the first,

She was brittle

she was broken and bloody,

like a doll given to a manic, sick, child,

and she was yet to realize

that human emotions were not bearable by angels.

Humans were painfully complex,

angels were simple,

angels could work,

without the need for unnecessary emotions,

no need for poignant thoughts

and so love and hate were but nothing

when all that angels felt

was burning rage

or boiling glory.

All writers are meant to suffer,

that rule

was made by poetry

not by those who wrote it.

And so, the angel suffered further.

Few understand the price of artistry.

Few realize they are being drained by their own attempt at escape,

you cannot escape.

You cannot attempt.

It will only hurt further.

Your escapism will fuel hunger,

and this hunger cannot be satisfied by what you have,

and so you will starve.

Ember in place of sky,

The world is truly, a small place,

yet so out of reach.

Tongues will knot in endeavour

of explaining

what we already see.

What our eye ignores,

our mind cannot dwell on.

Out of sight,

Out of mind.

Hence after she tried to forget him.

Tried to forget the searing ache that embodied her

tried to ignore the flutter of her skeletal wings as they protested

she kept trying and trying,

but we all know trying is never enough.

Trying can only get you so far.

Can only fuel so much false hope,

so that false is masked

by a sheet as thin as froth,

and fools mistake it for verity.

Nightmare after nightmare, all were same;

The golden turned scarlet

the blue turned flame,

as her pupils widened in welcome for her abode above

expecting,

and as all expectations,

was met with disappointment,

and a little twist

of angels seething,who flit out in hunt

for this little star who had fallen

little golden who had run.

Awaking always in the same misery,

forever unable to grasp the world,

the world unable to grasp her,

for her eyes could not meet theirs

inferno eyes, she possessed

hot as the stars,

and as pleasing from afar,

only to be set ablaze when the distance narrows.

Wretched eyes,

wretched state,

wretched view

of this wretched place.

Oh how she hated it here.

Oh how she loved him here.

Golden golden golden

Torn out of her lungs

hot tears ran like flame,

mortal or not

his soul

was too far

and she was but a soul

in his absence.

Yet in his presence she could not remain.

In his presence her heart would burn

and in her presence his body would instead,

such was the curse

of her divinity,

for you cannot touch an angel,

as you cannot touch a star.

You cannot fool yourself with such notions,

they are not nearly to you as close

as distanced from you they are.

Hot, furious, aching tears or yearning,

of desperation

for what?

A coup d'œil de ton cher cheri?

Un aperçu du doré ?

Dites-moi, what is it that you want?

Qu'est-ce, ah, qu'est-ce?

How piteous.

You must be raving.

Well, not you,

but she certainly was.

Frothy, chapped lips, scarlet flecked, upturned in amusement,

as she saw him cross her path yet again,

sun turning his brun hair a brilliant treasure.

Coup d'œil indeed.

It is more than a stroke of the sun, it is the inferno of the eternal, inferno of passion,

her inferno, siphoning off her light to feed itself.

Unsoundness of mind emboldening her,

her folly opened her sore mouth,

and suddenly

all that lives

went still,

all that pretends too

had to follow,

the wind turned around,

trees no longer bent down,

the wisps of cirrus went abate in their waltz of the blue,

and the air was filled with a sound

a sound one hears

only twice in their presence in this plane of existence;

once, when you are welcomed,

once when you depart,

but I suppose all on Earth who lived at the time

of the rebellion of this brittle angel,

would have heard this sound

one more time

between their life,

and their death,

but not as alluring as the whole choir.

You know it is just one angel,

and you know this angel is unlike any other.

Her voice is raw and obsessive,

God themselves would be jealous of how

such music could be made from her alone and yet so captivating,

to elucidate this experience, I'll write how

hearing her octave switch from dramatic divinity

to these pure, beguiling wails,

gives a premonition

similar to the feeling of when one finds

a violin's wood

shattered

and strings one ballad away from snapping,

but to the violinist,

even in the roughest state of the violin,

when the fingers lead the bow to swim down the chords

the mind has already heard the note

before the violinist's movements attempt it,

but what a shame,

the audience does not share the mind of the artist,

they cannot make out the art,

only the broken reverberations,

but again, to the violinist,

love is blind,

and love is deaf,

the music made is

no less

than perfect.

And to the angel, as was her hymn.

Little to no time passed between this break of oath

and to the ramification of doing so,

in which

the sky stretched out

as a line appeared parallel to the horizon

and darkened to bronzen gold

while what seemed as wisps of white, silver and grey

flitted in their wrath

from this seam of the heavens,

careering for the fallen muse of ours,

who, in her lamentable state,

when matched to the fury of these divinities,

burned up

into everything

and into nothing

as if the sun had finally shone its last

before flaring upon all that we know of life.

Consequently,

the mortal for whom

this depraved voice had run unbridled,

only turned his head,

and saw

the shimmering reflection

of the sky in the lake;

regal purple emracing carmine

do seem to leave mouths open

but not even a painter could describe how

a blast of gold

made the vision

the most beautiful sunset

he had ever seen in his life,

"almost as if,-"

his poet mind awed

"an angel was struck

by the hands

of the celestial

who once held her up.".

Reach me at:

Amitrana192@gmail.com

Mob 99581 29981

About the Competition

The Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar celebrates the diverse voices and stories of creative writers worldwide. It serves as a platform for poets and authors to share their unique perspectives and artistic expressions. Each submission is a testament to the power of words and creativity, reflecting the rich tapestry of human experience through poetry, short stories, essays, and creative writing.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Mayra Rana for sharing "Briefe an Haduwig" with the Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her profound exploration of a fallen angel's journey and the themes of love and longing have left a lasting impression. It is through contributors like Mayra that the competition continues to thrive as a beacon of creative expression.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.