I am not my father He is immigrant & I have never been one. He is tall & I am me and so I am not my father. I am loud & his voice is strong enough to be soft and not collapse. He is a healer & I write poetry He is orphaned & … Continue reading poetry// thickener
prose// the length of love
I think about the ways I want to gather up the sounds of my family, pile on as much as my hands and hard drives can carry when we expend ourselves to the very maximum. What lengths for lineage I would leap in a heartbeat! Memorize the laughter, the inflections, the accents, the words they speak in a dialect that is crisp and yet silky in my ear. There are few things as beautiful to my ears as Sudanese Arabic, shuffling its way across the tongues of women who smell like heaven. Everything flows effortlessly from my father's people and the place they proudly represent: the drape of the toub, the bright and blooming karkade that tinkers in glasses, the cold water of the Nile, the long tresses of a laughing girl who flounce her way past me in the masjid foyer.
poetry// acrobatics
When I am this far off the ledge, barely dangling, you cannot love me home Wait for me at the bottom instead. Upturn your arms, Become The Home I think about the times here I grimace at myself and my mouth. I needn't split my hands to mold strange people into good friends, I have … Continue reading poetry// acrobatics
poetry// illness
God is good to me. I wait & I wait & I wait And each morning I rise I stumbled out of bed And stay frozen there Sometimes. God is good to me. I bite my tongue and let the blood collect in my mouth I tear up my clothes and scatter them around my … Continue reading poetry// illness
poetry// holy water
Water is my healing It calls my name in all of its pronunciations My toes crawl back to the rivers & the lakes & the places I know where the earth’s veins tumble open And oxidize at human touch. Water is my song The waves / the sounds of river slapping up against concrete harbor … Continue reading poetry// holy water
prose// facing Failure
I am grappling with just so many things this semester. I think the biggest one, right now, the biggest mountain I am staring at and trying to figure out how to cross is Failure. There. I have named it and now I am one step closer to conquering it, which seems paradoxical, and perhaps, it … Continue reading prose// facing Failure
prose// transit, travel, & The Next Big Thing
Here I am, riding on the train back to school from my parents’ home. I realize I spend an awful lot of time in transit. One city to the other, one building to the other, one class to the other. From the room to the laundry room back up the stairs again. I walk. Often. … Continue reading prose// transit, travel, & The Next Big Thing
poetry// daybreak
what is fajr to the modern Muslim? The crack of dawn and the breath of a cold and weary room exchange a tender kiss and I am a witness. This bed is warm and sleep is too and it is so nice to be numb in this world of pain. What does it mean to be … Continue reading poetry// daybreak
prose// arabic-less
I was flipping through my class notebook from last year and found this written a midst my philosophy notes: "My arabic is the beginning of my shame. It is emptiness." I do not speak Arabic. My father does and my grandmother does and so do my aunts and uncles and cousins whom I have not … Continue reading prose// arabic-less
prose// jiddu
We all have our own motivations for seeking Heaven: life without pain, wealth, bounty, good food, the Prophet’s home, your home, eternal bliss. I think about and remember those things too when I pray, when I fast, when I pin my hijab into place in the morning. But I also crave Heaven for another reason. … Continue reading prose// jiddu
