In the spring of my senior year of high school, I attended an accepted students’ day at Virginia state school, as I had done with all the schools I was considering for the following fall. That day, in the large basketball stadium, before the student body and all the guests, the president of the university … Continue reading prose// (if and) when may arrives
Blog Posts
prose// seasonal produce
These days, winter comes angrily. Or maybe not. I project onto the weather sometimes, you know. Am I an onion? Strange question, I know. Obvious answers are evident, but who could possibly be that interested in the obvious?! I've thought about onions a lot. Vegetables that peel away, layer after layer, until there is nothing … Continue reading prose// seasonal produce
prose// sleep songs and other things
Time has stretched over the frame of my story like the skin of a large animal, a cloak, a worn in quilt. Somethings are not granted that kind of elasticity: food, sleep, the brief transition from summer to winter where it is cool and light and the air smells like it rained but it didn’t. … Continue reading prose// sleep songs and other things
prose// things i have learned to write and never say
I remember London. I think I was the first student in a long time to go to London and not go to Paris. Sometimes I wish I had gone to the Mona Lisa. See if she looked anything like me. Namesakes are funny. People tell me, oh, I know a Mona, or oh my wife’s … Continue reading prose// things i have learned to write and never say
prose// why i need water. often.
The thing is, I don't really know what I'm doing. They say the Sunnah is a blue print for how to live your life but there's nothing in there about how to deal with vitriol on social media, how to manage panic attacks, how to not fail your intro philosophy course senior year. Sure, there's … Continue reading prose// why i need water. often.
prose// volume
There are many things in life you cannot rehearse for. I know this, of course, at an intellectual level. But still yet, well, I rehearse nearly everything. The conversation before a meeting, the smile I will grace at the event that evening, the conversation I want to have with my father the next day. I … Continue reading prose// volume
prose// the worst thing I ever did
Sometimes I wish I could build a bonfire for my phone and my computer, book the earliest flight to the middle of nowhere, and live there forever after. I am too sensitive for my own good I think. I hold too much, take to many things personally, walk through the world getting bruised my too … Continue reading prose// the worst thing I ever did
prose// the cost of growth
There is something else beyond nostalgia that accompanies me whenever Facebook recommends a memory. You know, where they show you what you wrote on this exact day maybe a year ago or even more? I am in that phase of life where things happen so quickly sometimes you forget just how much you have grown, … Continue reading prose// the cost of growth
prose// on swelling and other things
I am in this funny phase of life where time moves quickly and so do I with it. The amount of growth that takes place in even a week astounds me sometimes. I don't know if I were to meet the woman I was even six months ago if she would be able to recognize … Continue reading prose// on swelling and other things
prose// the night of ancestral longing
On this night, 1400 years ago, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was taken from Makkah to Jerusalem in one night. Space shrank in an unprecedented way. Distance dissolved, the barriers between life and death grew blurry and soft. Prophets who had long been dead rise to pray, Adam and Abraham and Jesus and … Continue reading prose// the night of ancestral longing
