Golden Shovel after Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" In the last third, there is no one to speak to but You,and still, my mouth is unable to perform what I was createdto do. Prayer, an oasis in the midst of the nighttime desert / If only I was brave enough to resist sleep, … Continue reading poetry// tahajjud (taking measurements)
writing
prose// lake street
I promised myself that here, I wouldn’t fold. The sun is a giant, blistering nectarine in the sky, hung just above the horizon, a marionette on a divine string. I am a tense driver, furrowed brow and eyes unafraid of so large a star. This little town is like a storybook. It is artificial and … Continue reading prose// lake street
poetry// like i told you, this world is a bayou
Everywhere I go, my palms are never large enough: the anamnesis of my sorrow tumbles into the wetness. Soaked through is everything in me I had hoped to re-read one day. Soggy pages disintegrate beneath the murkiness; me, covered in mud, my mouth, stuffed with grief. Each new place brings its own funerals, its own … Continue reading poetry// like i told you, this world is a bayou
prose// for Mama Nafisah
the people i love are dying. my great-grandmother, a great-aunt, my father's eldest sister has too been tucked underneath the earth. i clench my jaw laying in my bed. it is all i can do to save myself from jumping out of my blankets and running to the airport to leap on the first flight to Khartoum that i can book. i wouldn't even know where to go looking for the right graveyards, for where to lay down on the earth and press my heart as close as I can to where theirs used to pulse. i want to be loved by the people in my family who knew Allah.
poetry// funeral after funeral After Funeral
To believe Allah is enough for you and to actualize it are very different things... I know one and sometimes cannot even conceive of the other. I know that people are people, but people can sometimes seem like mountains. Move! Move! Move! (But they only speak sedentarism) perhaps, to believe that wholeness can be felt … Continue reading poetry// funeral after funeral After Funeral
prose// ramadan, ya ramadan (please, be gentle, I am fragile)
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// 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
Daughter of Diaspora 