Last year was the best Ramadan of my life. I am afraid of what is supposed to take place on Thursday, the birth of a month as old and as familiar to me as my own family. I keep thinking, was that the peak? Will I never experience a Ramadan like that again? When I … Continue reading prose// ramadan, ya ramadan (please, be gentle, I am fragile)
prose// time and its selfishness, death and its callousness
Today, I cried. Over many things (life is heavy, I am fragile, tears are easy to self produce), but one of them was seeing the faces and names of the elders in our Muslim community who have passed away over the past few weeks, days, and even hours. I am in shock I think, at … Continue reading prose// time and its selfishness, death and its callousness
poetry// (bearing witness)
I have sunken into the twin bed at my parents’ house. We are one and the same: the mattress and I, the ancient-ness of this bedroom, the loss of so many things, the having of so much and the knowing I have done nothing to deserve any of it. (i am so small, so not … Continue reading poetry// (bearing witness)
prose// coping mechanisms (come undone?)
sometimes I wonder if I didn’t do it to myself. the way I have always escaped to the imagination, taken the corners of my own mind as solace, only ever really trusted myself with the full color of my dreams. I wonder how fragile I have always truly been, within myself, the shell of a … Continue reading prose// coping mechanisms (come undone?)
prose// birth anniversaries and the witnessing of classrooms hallowing
I have felt it today, maybe for the first time in four years, maybe not, it is hard to recall. The texture of knowing, the feeling, “oh wow, this is what I have been doing for four years”. You know, the part of the Toni-Morrison-novel-reading-journey when you finally catch a glimpse of “it”: the arch, … Continue reading prose// birth anniversaries and the witnessing of classrooms hallowing
prose// stained glass and yard gazing
I wonder why I am unable to do the things that I need to do. It is astonishing the capacity of the human body, even more jarring the way anxiety can take a person and turn them to quicksand. Everything sinks in me. Nothing floats. I make everything I cradle in my mind for even … Continue reading prose// stained glass and yard gazing
prose// (if and) when may arrives
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
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
poetry// distance(d)
I want things I do not deserve. how awful to be choked by your own idle and uncertain hands? Maybe that is the punishment: longing with no reciprocity. it is impossible to know the dead the way I need to-- so take me to Medina! I just want to taste it for a moment, (what … Continue reading poetry// distance(d)
poetry// origin stories
Before everything else, I am water. (I think) The Thames was nice and so was the Schuylkill, The Potomac too, I think. I remember the Nile. The Great Lakes. The Chesapeake Bay Like when my uncle joined our field trip and sat in a boat full of small Muslim children and they had never been … Continue reading poetry// origin stories
Daughter of Diaspora 