Storms

You were the weaver of words
I was the fountain of pain
We spent all our days drinking coffee that was too sweet
And words that were too bitter

The space between us closed with words we hurled like slurs and fists that moved so fast they blurred
You carried the sea in your eyes
It carried you whole
I carried my grief like the wind chimes carried the wind
You were once the reason for the fault in my faith
The line marking my failed attempts
You were in every unnoticed  detail
The inkstains on imperfect pages
the reason for the bruises on my face
The blood underneath my fingernails
You were the battle. And I never won.
You were the storm raging inside
Blowing these castles I built on thin air
I never won
But neither did you.

For the ones that lost their way home

It's been forever that I've been trying to let go now. I'm beyond telling myself this is a transient phase, this is a resting place and one day I will wake up and this will have passed away, that one day I will let go of the things I loved in you that are gone, and I will let go of you.  

This detestation of your new identity will be the destruction of me, this endless reconstruction of memories, so I can cling on to what you used to be, but it's all a facade, it's all a fantasy. I have to let go of the girl I knew because she longer exists, because she's no longer you.  

Your vacant eyes reflect your vacuousness.  Your effortless blending into the generation of self obsession and vulgar pretentions is seamless. Praiseworthy even.

I'd ask if you were losing your sanity but you're too busy justifying your senseless defiance, your persistent insistence on living a purposeless existence. 

Too busy with your callous words and attention seeking, too busy sowing fruitless seeds to consider what you'll be reaping. I couldn't accept the world of unintelligent words and unspeakable slurs that has become you. The world of easy girls and desperate flirts and hiding behind  makeup layers. Of displaying yourself with ruthless abandon , of forgotten self respect and forbidden interests . Your dismissal of your self worth is disgusting , you're getting yourself hurt and you're unrelenting. Spitting out these words at you, is the least I can do, this loathing of you, and your endless sins is driving me nuts like an endless siren. The tirade in my head, you're not worthy of contempt , you're not worthy of the number of breaths I'm taking to get this across but I believe that inside of you is someone who once ignited something inside of me. Someone who inspired the fire that was otherwise dying.Someone young and smart and beautiful and incisive. and the only reason I'm wasting this space is so you can look back and ask yourself what changed, what brought you this disgrace, what made you this way. Find the answers to the questions nobody asking you because everyone's looking away when you're going astray and everybody talks and nobody cares. And nobody hates you and what you do enough to say I love you, I'm trying to help you, come back to the real you.

dark

This ache is incessant. I can feel it clawing around the edges of my consciousness , trying to drown me again. I thought it would be so easy. I cannot care so intensely , it is consuming me, burning my skin into fragments, feeding a fire I thought I had the power to kill. I've reduced myself, I'm afraid , that I will not matter , in the end, to you.  I toy with the idea that I never have. You never failed to deliver disappointment,  I never failed to deliver tears. I wonder if this will be anything like I wished and hoped and prayed for it to be. You're woven too damn deeply into this tapestry inked across with the bitterness of faint memories and the smoke of the inevitable. It is tempting to force you out, pull at the one thread that has your colour  draining all over it and risk shredding the entire masterpiece. You remind me of my darkest places and I cannot stand to look directly in your eyes. I am afraid. Of breaking the delicate spell of walking curtly around the edges, pretending we don't know what we know, and jerking ever so slightly when the spaces between our words diffuse to something we've fought to counter the existence of.
The first time I escaped I could hear a hundred hearts singing their freedom and now it's just a vast, emptying, draining silence. The endless depths of resigned acceptance.

raw.

" I think the only happy people are those who can forget. I think the only way I'll ever be at peace is after I die. "

Don't think of her face, don't think of what she said, don't think of the fury burning red underneath her skin just like it consumes you now, because you're of the same blood. Fire doesn't put out fire , baba told you that, but you didn't listen kid, and you got burned, you got burned and you blamed a thousand others before you realised it was your hate charring you to the bone. I don't want any more empty nights staring up at the ceiling. Don't look at the boy in the black shirt, he has too beautiful a face and it reminds you too deeply of pain, and no,  God no you don't need reminding. Don't think of mama, you hurt her too much and it still kills you today, don't think of her fried chicken when you miss her and please don't think about how you'll miss out on him growing up, and don't think about how you were so afraid for your cousin and how you've learnt you'll always love some people more than they'll ever love you back, and don't think about the hurt when love turns to hate like it has all too often for you, and don't wonder what's wrong with you when you stare at your palms and they seem crooked and you wonder if they cut you up and ripped your heart out, will it be as black as your burnt bones when you were done with your hate. Don't listen to the music that makes you happy because you hate that it can speak to you like that, don't think about her face when she said I will never forgive you, don't think of the cloud that darkened his eyes when you failed him again, and don't think of wrists slit so deep they left pits instead of scars. 

Swallow this dignity, you were meant to be humiliated, and people lied, the pain didn't fade with time, it got stronger and you got weaker and don't cry, there isn't anyone to tell you that it will end, this will end, and the tears wouldn't put out the fire that has chafed you away. Don't think of the bitter words that tasted like acid on your tongue when you thought of them, and god how much you wished you could take them back, but they cut through the air and  reached her and her hurt remained inked in time forever. And in the aftermath it was just you, and you swore you were whole but  when the smoke and fumes died down, you were only ashes,burnt and blackened and nothing else.

Effervescent. The nature of these volatile memories. Walk with me, you exist for me as but a figment of my imagination. Look at these corridors, they are the hallways of my dusty mind and here hangs a painting of you. Cordoned off, you see, I'm only allowed to enter in the darkest of my moments. There's too much pain here. Why is the dark established so firmly and the light so fast fading? Hold on to me. But I can't anymore. If ignorance is bliss, then to forget is a blessing. You're running out of time. I know. We all are, really. Some faster than others though. I do have desires to leave early, there must be a better world beyond this.
But you don't get to choose when you leave. So we pretend the darkness doesn't exist. We wait, biding or time.
There is a way out. And one day we'll escape this. 

Hope began here

We owned the night. Every star looked like it shone out of the purple dimness for us, and for us alone. Our feet dangled so many floors above the earth. There's always pleasure breaking the rules when risking your life is involved. 
'No practical jokes' I remember you warn me, as you sit on the wall bordering the terrace, a breath away from falling into the abyss below. I'm more afraid of heights than either one of you and I beg you to come back. But that was a week ago and tonight I'm sitting on the highest ledge next to you. The wind is harsh and beautifully cold and our innocence is so beautifully unscarred.
It's a full moon night and we howl because we had to be wilder and louder than anything in the darkness. Eventually we end up lying on our backs staring at the infinity of lights that was always meant to be ours. Our secrets and whispers are drowned out by the wind and our laughter is carried away. One night out of the many crazy nights on the terrace, it rained. God that was rare in this country and ever so beautiful for it. Exotic, even. The streetlights didn't dim out here and we watched our world remake itself before our eyes. 
I saw you weep once, once only and I don't remember anything crushing me so immediately and so much. Its easy to forget you're not invincible, too. You still wouldn't let me hold you, you were too busy looking after me to let me comfort you and upturn the balance. 

That January I left home everyday with a broken heart and found home with you. The weather was terrible and the world had changed again, but it was no longer beautiful, the stars no longer shone for us and it hadn't rained in a while. The terrace lay dusty and the winds were colder than was beautiful, and I didn't find the words to whisper to you under the blanket of the stars, to explain this pain, but you understood and you held me till I slept, it was my only refuge from the world I didn't know anymore. 

PS I can't find pictures I can  post of these nights, I don't think we took very many.

PPS I think I was the happiest in my life at this point.

peace.

I woke up one April morning to find the roofs and roads blanketed in yellow flowers and thought it was the most beautiful thing ever.  I got caught in the rain back home from class and enjoyed every minute of it. "You actually like getting caught in the rain ?" they asked incredulously. I was brought up in a desert, I thought, you will never hear me complain about the rain.

I found home with girls who had lost mothers, faces that had lost colour and eyes that refused to see the light and hearts that knew nothing but darkness. People found smiles marked in me where they should've found sighs and I learnt to be grieved for the right reasons, because up until now I'd been doing it all wrong.  The spot on the ground where my breaths ended and began in prayer knew all my secrets. and tears found my eyes when I didn't want them to and disappeared when I needed them the most. Burdah became my favourite tune and my fingers found the replay button every time Mesut Kurtis was on. I rediscovered human insensitivity, and I told my heart that this was home now, and it beat like it wanted out of this body.  My skin resigned in flakes that covered the floor and my hair receded to a brittle consistency, refusing to accept change. This is home, I tell myself even though my dreams are discontent here and even though I know back there isn't really home anymore.

The first time I left everything I called home, I was eleven years old and I believed that my favourite places and faces would never forget me. But years later the tides still washed up remnants of broken bodies and the wind still whistled even though I wasn't there to hear it and the corners of my house were home to somebody else's fears and dreams and echoed somebody else's footsteps.  I became a distant memory to the corridors I had lived in and loved and when I was done weeping the world didn't recognise me anymore and I didn't belong, but I had long stopped wanting to.

When I was sixteen, I felt my heart break for the first time , and I was convinced the pain would never cease. When nothing was familiar anymore and the only path ahead was shaky and insecure, I found my self frozen in place, afraid of moving ahead and falling, and yet not wanting to be left behind.

So when things are unfamiliar again, and the faces blur into strangers, when the world has erased my space,  I convince myself with quotes and phrases; until the answer comes to me so clearly, I wonder if it was there all along and I refused to see it. No place here is ever meant to be mine. Nothing in this world truly owns me and I will never belong to anyone or anything here. I do not own this body , this soul, this heart, they answer to Someone else and no place in this dunya was ever meant to be home.

Here's what I would say to you if I could

We might not really understand His reasons for doing everything, but in the long run we'd realise whatever happened was truly the best for us. People come into your life as blessings or trials, take the blessing and bear the trial. And try to learn the lessons you were meant to learn from this. He removes people from our lives when He sees fit to, and no, perhaps we don't understand right away but soon we will. And if we have bad days now, we will have good days soon after. Read the Quraan, it will get you through everything. Those Words somehow manage to calm hearts and end tears. Have faith in yourself, you are stronger than anyone I know. And the dark might envelope you like a shroud now, but the dawn is near. I promise you that. 

The unseen

Here's to the wrinkles on faces that are not ashamed , the scars that are not botoxed away and hidden under concealer. Here's to the beauty of the poem, not the words or the lines or the rhyme but everything in between, because after all this time, you've learnt to read between the lines. Here's to sad eyes that are so much better without eyeliner because they are not ashamed of having shed tears and here's to beauty that cannot be seen but only felt. Here's to people that have lived imperfect lives marked with grief and mistakes and are not ashamed of it. Here's to us, we are but particles of dust in an infinite universe and we have the nerve to yell and demand to be heard , here's to the fight that never left with death and here's to all the things people cannot see , people have never seen fire, they have only seen flames and there is a fire inside you and and there is a fire inside me.  And here's to fires that were never put out by words and fires that never dimmed with time.  And here's to your dreams , they will keep you awake when the world sleeps and tomorrow is a promise that is all yours to take , I can fan your flames but nobody  in this world can burn them like you. And burn, let it consume you and your soul and be the best damn dreamer there ever was.

sparks

and in that brief intermittent instant
when our eyes searched each other's souls
I understood when you said  
you've been broken and rebuilt too
the void in your epicenter when you confessed;

"there are seas of words within me,
the unspilt ink of a thousand unwritten stories
and sometimes the waves let me float
But sometimes they drown me."

Penitence.

But mama I'm a changed man, I swear it on every promise that I broke,
I've counted my mistakes and I'm ashamed of all I spoke.
and I hate my hands for what they did,
I'm ashamed of all I wrote.
but mama I swear I'm clean of hate,
I changed after I broke.
I woke up everyday to see a stranger in my face,
and I cant look myself in the eyes,
I'm desire's guileless slave.
I've been to hell and back and I swear,
I'm never going back again.
cos Mama, I'm not the same.

***


I've got to learn from every mistake that I've made
I'm ashamed of my past and scars I cant erase
but if you try to take that from me, then I wouldn't be the same
and you say it's a test
and "things happen for the best",
but I can't guarantee an A.
And if I tell you I don't recognise the person that I am
Would you believe that I am in chains?
and I am breaking free of what was me
I'm breaking everyday.
I have a healing soul and a softened heart
and I know nothing for sure
except for this, and only this
I'm not who I was before.

Slaves of perception

Amid the shaky trembling bodies

this ocean of lost souls swimming against the currents of life

I make my way

it's just another day.

What if you could see past skins and sins? What if you could perceive what lies inside every being? When the different textures and colours of epidermis flake off with time, will we realise we're all the same inside? We have hearts that beat out names and sing melodies our brains have forgotten how to dance to and we all have felt the desperate beating of a single heart against the breaking and we have shut our eyes and tried to dream while fear laced its fingers in our souls.  we have had hopes crushed and dreams walked all over and our words hushed and our spirits killed underneath the cover of skins; we hide these secrets like grains of sand lost in the sea, hoping despite ourselves that they'll metamorphose into strings of pearls and wishing someone would  take a leap of faith into the ocean and dive deep down to find us and

love us and we'd realise we're beautiful to someone and we mean something to someone and believing that that is all we ever needed .And  we pray that when it does happen, it'll be enough.

surface scratches

I need to feel alive. I need to jump from somewhere up high just so when my bones break I know they were really there and that there's a body of me and parts of me and bits of soul clinging to it, all trying to hang together to stay alive.I need to touch something and see the mark my fingerprints leave on it to prove to the world I'm not invisible as they would have me believe. I'm here, I'm human, and I'm alive and I still have time.

I wish I could make tangible lines to mark what I know for sure and what has washed away with time. I wish I could pick out a passing second in time and know for sure that's when I started falling apart so I could turn back and fix whatever was breaking inside me. I hope this will be behind me one day, I'm tired of permanence and I'm tired of change, and I'm tired of the ground shifting underneath my feet so when I look up I'm not really where I thought I was. I don't want to be confused anymore, I don't want to be scared
and alone and depressed and overcome by the waves I drowned within me, and I don't want all the scars I ever fought to resurface on my skin, just to prove to me I'm not whole. I'm fragile like my skin when it flakes off to reveal my imperfection. I'm empty as my eyes when the tears have run dry and empty as your words when you tried to apologise. I'd claim to be immune but my weaknesses are showing through the cracks and peels when I can't hide underneath the guise of my skin anymore. Seek the light, you told me once, and I've been searching ever since.

Deliverance

I've been daydreaming about 

that fateful afternoon

When our eyes met and smiles 

danced in conversation

And how your heartbeat quickened

When we were sipping coffee

The tremble in your palm

When you reached out to touch me

And your breath warming my flushed cheeks

When we were too breathless to speak.

I remember here, in this room 

Your chocolate kisses and your fingertips 

When we swayed back and forth

On the currents of fickle faith

I remember all the promises you made

That you never managed to keep

I remember my absolute naïveté.

I've been thinking about empty mornings

And the air heavy with your absence 

and how our words blurred into silence

And the silence ceased to be comforting.

I've been trying to remember to forget

The way our fingers seemed to interconnect

The way you moved with easy grace

Your luscious lips upon my face

So here it is, empty room and empty words

I've tried talking about it, but I doubt you heard

Or cared either way.

The coffee cups sit empty

The silence is overwhelming

How do you undo a part of your life

And disconnect it from your living?

How do you manage to break things that are already broken?

How do you bury words that have already been spoken?

Is there no limit to the grief I can feel?

When the darkness devours the light

And everything becomes unreal 

When you're no longer by my side

Where does the phantom pain begin to ache 

When I can't find home because it isn't a place

Walls.

Where does the warmth in your arms go when you don’t want to hug me any longer? Where does the light in your eyes disappear to when you don’t want to smile any longer?  Where does the comfort of sunlit afternoons go in the winter?

Why does everything beautiful disintegrate? Why are we forever being subject to change? When we are weaklings, unfit to survive slights.

Where do memories go when I refuse to relive them? Why has the passion in your eyes diffused to steely stares? Where does your heart go when it ceases to care? Where do your unspoken words go when the space between us grows? How can you be? So still and so silent and so cold.

Where does the sun go when the sky weeps?

 Where do I go when you’ve replaced me?

"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star, in somebody else's sky
But why, why, why can't it be mine?"

- Pearl Jam, "Black" 

"This time, we don't need another perfect lie"

In the middle. In the middle is how I will describe this while I wonder if I will try to erase this from my mind later on in life.  In the middle of a dark past and a bright future is when I struggle to block out the memories. Just like my siblings. They try, too. We all try. But it never really leaves. You always remember and your eyelids are always struggling to stay dry when you’re in the middle.

All my secrets cannot forever be holed up in my head for the sake of maintaining a normal front in society. One day they will spill over. One day the floodgates will break under the pressure of wet eyes and stories untold, and one day, the whole world will know what we concealed in our hearts and minds even though it almost drove us crazy as her, crazy until we broke in front of family and friends who left because they got busy and all we really had was ourselves, me and my sister. 

Erasing the middle, I wish I could tell you how it was. It’s like knowing your name begins with an S and ends with an H but there are blanks spaces in between, blank spaces and you don’t know what you became in the middle, what changed and gave you courage, courage to run away from this, run away from home, run away from her. Run away even though the voices in your head called you a coward for not fighting back, not standing up for him, run away because you’re brave enough to confess to yourself that you  have no strength against this.

Screw the stars for promising us a better future, for making the skies look like they were shining for us and screw the world for telling us everything would be alright, happy endings are only in chapters that lead to bad beginnings.  “You don’t know.” He sighed and I wish I could tell him I did. I did know of pain and terror of a very exquisite kind, something he would never know of. 

Erase the beginning because that’s where it all began. Erase the beginning, erase the moment you were born from the pages of the history books of the world because that’s the only way to escape the middle. If it wasn’t for the beginning, you wouldn’t have found yourself here, here in the middle.

The middle. Where you define yourself with words called adjectives to give yourself a ground to stand on.  And you can stand as long as you believe the lies the voices in your head breathe, the voices that everyone else believes. But when you realize you’re here in the middle and you don’t want to be here anymore, you notice the cracks in the ground before it gives way to your feet. 

When you realized it was all a facade, and it wouldn’t hold any longer. 

When the past finally caught up to the beautiful middle and ruined it. Despite all your efforts to run, run, run away from it.

I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be patient.

I’m sorry this really has no beginning or end, but I’ve stopped trying to make sense.

I need a compass, I need an atlas

I need you, and the ground to walk on

And stay steady under my feet when I cannot carry my own weight.

I need to be able to speak the truth

Like I know it, like we know it, the truth because

Nobody else knows it.

I need the blanks in the middle to go away

Please make them go away.

I need to not be afraid

Anymore.

And I need you to stay

On days when I’m in the middle.

And there are blank spaces everywhere.

"Lord, what fools these mortals are."

In that rush of time and breath between the seconds our eyes connect and our minds find each other behind the veil of our features, I find myself perfectly content. I chased a spirited dream along the boulevard of hope and death crushed my rose tinted beliefs in the cold, hard hands of truth, leaving me a jaded cynic lost in a time warp, unable to breathe or live easy for the fear of it happening again. Unable to hope, unable to dream. I was running in circles for an illusion I did not have the strength to stomach or the courage to brave. I proved my incapability in front of the silent watchers yet again and we both detested ourselves for it but our pain was already inked in the hands of fate, it was too little and far too late for change to make a difference. 

Forgive me, but I succumb to the devils of temptation and desire, to the fires they ignite in me and the ideas they incite in me. Recall my faith in you, it will help you survive the night , and you cannot reach the dawn save by the path of night. And when you don't miss me any longer, remember that I loved you once, with a fiery passion you failed to return except when you were consumed by your temper and I was consumed by my grief. I cried because it was easier, easier to let it out than to bottle it in but I have nothing to weep for anymore and no one to hold me if I did.

Connect the dots for me, I beg you, because I fail to understand, or I'm afraid to. You spell out your intentions in a string of words laced with malice, the end product of your anger and frustration at me because I could never be who you wanted me to be. I'm sorry, I whisper because I feel like it will make things better and make you a little less angry but it does not matter, you were not made to be moved or mollified, and you wave your dismissal without gracing me with a glance. I refuse to leave, feeling short-changed on forgiveness and because my apologies never come forth easily, and when they do, they're sincere enough to elicit a spark of affection, even from your stony heart. You refuse to yield and you swear you haven't changed but I know better. I knew you when you were human enough to love and you loved beautifully. I remember when you let passion make your promises for you and mischief danced in your eyes, when you whispered honeyed strings of words and kissed my hands like there was no tomorrow. And so I withdraw but I refuse to leave, I shall wait out the grief, I shall wait for the empath in you to claim your heart again, snatch it from the cold depths of your chest and let you love again, live and believe again. 

"Remember everything", she says when only the memory remains

If of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be."
-Francis Brett Hart

You did the favour of gracing me today

With your presence

Which wasn’t needed, I assure you

I didn’t particularly miss you in 

Your absence.

I mean, I may have looked at our old pictures

Of when we were smiling and laughing

When we were happy.

I may have cried a bit, or a lot

But I didn’t miss you, no.

I may have missed out on cleaning the hall closet

Like I planned, but I was too busy having my heart broken by you

And you, you were too busy with university

And your excuses, excuses, excuses.

But don’t worry about me, I have learnt

To keep busy

To keep my heart beating and my brain working and my lungs breathing

Without constantly reminiscing, remembering, breaking.

I may have recalled the way your shoulders cushioned my cheekbones

When they were tear scarred and sobbing

And wondered if those shoulders will ever be comforting

Me

Like that again.

Now I’m forbidden to talk about things

That we always used to talk about

I found home in your heart

And now I’m a stranger in my own home.

I confess, I wasn’t ready for this abyss

This big gaping space next to me

Where you used to be

I wasn’t ready to be broken

At least not by you.

But it’s okay, you’re too busy

To bother loving me

And I don’t miss you. I don’t.

And screw you for saying

We barely made it. We did.

And each fight just made me realize

That we can survive the worst parts of each other

And still love unconditionally.

Screw you and your

Goddamn epiphanies.

When you realize you don’t want to be

Overly attached to me because

I’m” leaving anyway”

That’s like trying to not

Love your family for fear of the pain they will cause when they die.

Be brave enough to love me, damnit.

Be brave enough to care.

Photospam!

This just really makes me laugh. People who read are always going to attract readers the most.

 Time's running out for all of us, really.

Word!

For everyone , that has someone they love miles away. Don't let distance ruin it.

Patience, prayers and promises

For those who are afflicted with disaster, glad tidings await them: so remain patient and happy with your Lord. "He cannot be questioned as to what He does, while they will be questioned." (Qur'an 21:23)

Tiny feet, pattering on the floor, following the shadow of his mother. “Mamma, I’m coming with you,” he  intones, trying to catch up, even though she’s only going to the kitchen, a few yards away.

I wonder if he was born with an inherent attachment to his mother, or it was simply the fear of abandonment tugging at his three year old heart. I wonder if that is innate too, or simply born from circumstance. Maybe he isn't old enough to know, but I wonder if he’s astute enough to feel it. Maybe we don’t see all that he sees simply because we believe the young don’t understand so much.

I hypothesize that he does feel it inside, a vague shadow of suspicion, even if he doesn't know yet. I wonder if it’s an inborn intuition, if everyone knows instinctively that they’re birthed by one, but born to two. Just like some of us are broken on the inside, hairline cracks running down our faith, scarring our hope, but we seem undamaged on the outside. Whole, and in one piece. Our perception is but faulty, and an illusion at best.

I look down at his sibling, fragile and perfect, like stained glass. His little hands curl up in soft balls against his chest and his small, beating heart, as he breathes in little sighs, in, out. His sleeping face is serenity personified, minute laughs punctuating his breaths as he dreams in his slumber. I pray for him, for the tables to turn, my qualms whispered in the silence of the night to the All Hearing. I wish for his contentment to endure perpetually.

I remember when I saw his mother gazing in wonderment at his minuscule feet. They were only as long as my thumb and as wide as two of my fingers. “They’re so beautiful,” she sighed and kissed them, the pink clean soles soft as down.

The futility of wondering why what happened did, teaches me to trust in fate, trust in His Plan, trust that everything transpires for a reason, and faith teaches me that this too, shall pass, this too.  For indeed with hardship will be ease, indeed with hardship will be ease, I whisper in the dark, reassuring my flawed faith, drawing blissful strength from the divine words, holding on to them, holding on to myself.