Silk for skin

The fleeting idea of meeting you intersects with the inevitable idea that we weren't meant to be in my mind.
You were the full moon to my wolf, the stars to my empty night canvas , the inescapable sun in my quiet mornings , the dew on the the leaves and the cheerleader on the sidelines,the strength of my being and the the survival of my existence. My skin wouldn't breathe without you and my heart refused to shelter what it should in your place.

Separation was inevitable and prewritten,  I fought wars with destiny and you battled with scars I couldn't see and didn't hear about because we weren't talking , I learnt to grow and you learnt to live and baby, I was still naive .

I still thought we'd learn from mistakes

and learn from it when the ground gave way

beneath our feet and

dear god help me

Realise that you're not my friend. You can't be

You're the afterthoughts I try to forget ,the blackness in the night as it envelops me , the brokenness in the forgiveness I had to concede for the apologies I never received ,you're the hurt in the aftermath of a cursed relationship , you're the devil herself and you almost broke me. You're the bitterness in my coffee. You're the acid in my mouth the memories I breathe when I try to erase you from me you're the fingerprints on my skin in places that shouldn't be that will testify against me and

you
are
a
sin
And I'm trying not to be a sinner.
Forgive me.

Writers aren't meant to swim

We were born on dark nights when the sky was streaked purple and blue and the fire in your eyes has never dimmed since. I was a miracle , you were the only one who could break me. Blood never betrays blood and it's all a fucking fantasy and I'm the delusional dimwit that soaked in it all before the last wave I lapped up absolutely drowned me.
You're beautiful but you're a curse.
And I swear I thought I could save every lost soul drowning on every broken ship that feebly attempted to sail through the curse that people like to call life and after all this time that's the one quality under my fingernails I can't quite scrub out with cynicism: naiveté
And even though I was shown over and over
I was nobody's savior
It still hurt to not save you

It still hurt that I was her 2am call and I couldn't cushion her against the waves

Be her lifeboat , her lamp, her raft
I let her  drown
But it burnt most of all to be lied to by your own being
You can only save the drowning while you're afloat
And my bloodstained lungs let me think it was air I was breathing
And not
Water.

The enjoyment of deception

I need to stop needing you like the leaves need the air and the grass needs the water and I swear
The drunk couldn't love his drink like I've loved your
Mouth
And
What.
A .
Tragedy.
Life has  made us out to be
Chess players with Alzheimer's and soldiers practically paraplegic with all the fucking loving we did it drained us and all I can ask is
Was it real
Was
Any of it?
And when the illusion has drained us
and we are just
Under the choke chain of desire
And
Goddamn it, oxytocin ,
Will you still believe for a moment that
You loved me
Will
It
Matter.
Will I?

Strings attached

Why are we always so inevitably dysfunctional?
My existence has insistently become strings of words I shouldn't have said and memories I'm trying to forget
and
your face
is always in the fading background and I unfailingly
Feel like
I failed
To save you
From myself
From you
.from the insecurity of the 3 am but you didn't
Save
me
Either
And we were both so very sorry and yet so completely
Unapologetic.

Receding into the paths we took like keeping in touch didn't matter , I tried to forget you and you forgot what you were created for and we are both
So dysfunctional we're practically meant for each other
And the bitter irony in words unsaid
Is that we can read each others minds.
I know I wasn't enough.
But perhaps it was because I was made for someone else
I stopped loving you in the winter of the new year and twenty four months later you can still crush me like glass under your heels and
My beloved,
You didn't even have to
try.

"I never thought I'd meet anybody like you."

I did what I do best at midnight. I wrote. I hate my weaknesses creeping up on me like the stealth of this night and the precious precious time they're stealing from me. I detest everything you represent; the ultimate test ,which I feel like I'm going to fail.
There's your dark smouldering eyes and the valley of possibilities between us.
There's my hesitancy and my desire burning into an inseparable collision, locked in eye contact with you.
And there's an ocean in the middle ,of everything that could be that I'm terrified will happen, and still anticipating.

It's midnight and I've been breaking my promises to myself again
It's midnight and I've lost all hope in redemption before the first rays of mercy hit the western horizon to erase my desperation
Heedlessness is choking the humiliation the sane soul in me is supposed to be feeling and I'm still here , breathing. Not crying. But ripping inwardly into a thousand insignificant fragments . Still wishing I was who I used to be .

Leaving the fountain city

And sometimes when you leave someone, you leave a part of who you were with them. And sometimes you don't have a choice anymore because you abused the number of times you were given one. And when you leave you feel like you're taking a million pieces of a million hearts whose paths you've crossed and when none of them are any the wiser you wonder why you feel your missing parts so acutely.  Perhaps it will fade to a vague seemingly displaced hurt in places I can't reach, only time will tell the seconds I've counted that I wasn't chafed with regret and burnt black with sorrow.
Today was the first time I wept when I was leaving a city and for the life in me, I couldn't explain why.  Perhaps it was the people I was going to and their pain which is so real, it diminishes mine to almost nothingness, and perhaps it was the people I was leaving , we had never been together like this in at least seven years and sooner or later your blood will connect you when words cannot fill the gaps and you understand each other because you sigh together and you smile together too. And overrated words like I miss you too will never be substantial enough to describe the intensity of what I feel so I bridge our communication gaps with shiny eyed smiles that i can barely hold on to like the fragile grip I have on my emotions when we embrace. I will ache for you and this time we had together .

"You remind me of everything I want to kill you for. "

You burn like an insatiable fire across the forest of my existence , consuming and hungry , leaving nothing in your crazed desire to shred me into the destruction you want to make of my fragile bones and the heart that only ever had space for you . There's ash underneath my fingernails and their protests have made your back red and angry. You're out of control in the way a speeding train is ,you're destined for disintegration in the worst kinds of ways and you're deaf to me when I speak and you accelerate. You've left marks on this body and scars in memory I can never undo and you've ripped my heart up enough to never be erased.
You've insistently consumed my being since day one .
You're deluded that I've forgotten you , if you only knew how difficult you've made yourself to forget.
I love her so much I break on the inside a little bit everyday .
I want her to find god so badly my hands shake when I pray for her.
I want her to find god so badly tears are ripped from my throat with the unyielding force of a heart too small to hold everything I feel for her.
"I love without thinking about death " someone told me once , and I didn't understand till her.
My fingertips smell like you . My brain is a confusing altering state but it never breathes without you,  you've infiltrated every niche of my mind.
Everything I've written for three years has been about you.
I love her enough to find her, but she doesn't want to be found. In this junction of space and time I've  learnt to not call her mine.  In this paradoxical existence we dance around the truth we fought so hard to counter. But have you ever tried to rescue souls that were committed to drowning ?
It is hard.
It was hard.
Nobody ever said it's easy to get out alive. I wish you'd stay for Him. And I wish you'd stay for me. I wish you'd text me somedays and somedays I wish you could see how I've been burnt by you . Chafed and cut up and god how badly I want to save you from yourself it makes every wound reopen and bleed from the same scars you cut open in me and I'm bullet ridden bending backwards and you're unrelenting.
You think you know who you are but you're not the person you are capable of being .
Your sins don't make you. Your weaknesses don't define you. You are so much more than your mistakes.
I wish I could make you tear these  pages and rewrite the story that was always meant to be yours , which you haven't lived. I wish I could make you reclaim everything that was yours back,  and fight the demons within your veins . I wish I could bring you victory against your weaknesses.
You will always be perfect to me.
I wish I could take this bleeding hurt away from you and obliviate it.
I ache for the peace that comes with innocence and I want you to have it so much it cuts me up.
I wish I could save you from your own self  destruction.
I wish for so much it hurts to think about it.
Please  don't get lost.
It hurt enough to lose you once.

Burn scars for memories

I want her naked except for the gold chain.

She said I broke her heart. I'm sorry I ruined her. I didn't mean  to leave scars, I was trying to fix her and she slipped like glass from my hands.
I think I got cut , too.
I never thought it would still matter three years down the road.
I never thought she wouldn't be okay .
What if I told you everything I've written for three years has been about you?
I was fixing my heart until January and still reading your name between every line. You're the full stop to every untold story , the reason I can't walk into self ruination anymore. Because you left scars where you taught me lessons and I learnt that pain too, could be a memory.
I can still smell the way your mouth tasted and your fingers felt against my soul.
You've ripped me apart and I've clumsily put myself together with hands unused to picking up pieces of myself . All it takes you is the pull of a thread to undo me and I'm not bulletproof anymore.

Nineteen and learning.

This pain is blinding underneath my brain like an ocean of stories untold and tears unspilt.  Cracks around the edges, I thought I was okay. Ya habeebi,  tell me , why does it hurt like the last time I touched you and your face burnt my fingertips? Why are their still maps in the burn scars that trace back to you?

You're the last person on my mind and the first person on my dua list.

Why do the scars still bleed when they're invisible to me and I think I'm okay but I'm still a mess and why does it still ache like it did the first time? Why does it feel like the same pain is ripping out of the same wounds and crushing my self assured strength ? Why is this kind of hurt so unfamiliar and unidentifiable but still so very real?

Why are we always weaker than we think we are?

Why will the realisation of the fact that we will never be okay again not come to me with resignation or acceptance?

Sicknesses

Fear, the palpable kind
The truth was always what I hid from in this mockery of my heart
And in the end it was always you
The weakest link in the gold chain
The only scar that still bled
The mark of my weakest moments
And twenty four months and fourteen days after
I'm still running in circles around the cages in my brain
where I'm trapped.
The walls bear your name and your face is the protagonist
in the plot of every dream
And I have
run
out
of
Escapes.

Checkmate.

After so many years
You get a little tired of dancing and dallying
Around the bushes
The incessant tiptoeing of masked faces across the chessboard
The white tiles making the bloodstains seem brighter
The endless words my tongue refuses to articulate
Hesitation
the practiced kind.

I lost you.
Two years and three months ago.
And I've spent that much time minus six months believing you were the same person.
And despite my laughable naivete , I still believed
Until 25 minutes (and a heartbeat less) ago

But  now your words have spilt forth
across this battle zone
And for once they weren't controlled lies
At least now I can stop being mercilessly played
Your mask falls and so does my faith.
Check and mate.

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.