a daylight dream

  it’s been a week of saying goodbye to everyone I love here in Egypt. there have been so many tears— my learners breaking down in front of me, their tears soaking their shirts. so many hugs, so many nights I cannot sleep well in. something divine keeps me going.  my heart has never been that strong, shielding itself from heartbreak. it has never wanted much to be free, pushing the world aside so that it fights for itself ever so warmly. this little voice in me feels safer than before, but is often terrified by the enormity of the consequences that may follow. all it needs is to be given some guarantee that it will be okay, no matter what happens. all these years, I thought pushing myself away in selflessness was the path to salvation, when it was in essence my life that needed a little validation.  it’s quite depressing. all of it. but you should see how my face gleamed as I felt some kind of ethereal comfort in climbing that mountain. it feels like I’ve always wanted to...

  after all this time of feeling deeply betrayed, I feel it in my heart to trust again. to trust my decisions, intuition and dreams to live a life that brims and glimmers and somehow  lives . for six years, I strayed away from everyone who resembled my father with a deep distrust to every single character trait he had. I stuck to those who were so aggressively his opposite in an attempt to calm my inner child. it was mostly like fighting for survival, trying to replace my haunting memories of anything like him. it even hurts me that I chose a lover who was totally what he was not, and forgot who I truly wanted from love. it hurts so much that even that deeply he caved in, controlling my most intimate decisions, thinking it was me. and it hurts me to even think I tried to be less of my father in every way possible. excessively kind, sparing all my time for others, holding no boundaries to save space for myself. and when it was just me in my room, I’d be haunted by a crippling e...

  I’ve always been a bird. I’ve always been a blackbird. my heart has always turned to sing the most illuminating, transcendental tune in the dead of its winter. in the dead of what must take so much time to be fixed. still, it sees what could be, it sees the glimmering faint lights of approaching spring. it sees God’s inevitable mercy in all things. I’ve always been hopping from one dream to the next, eyes pinned to stretched skies and clouds so dear. I’d be in my own world, in shrouded mystery, in exploration and mischievous innocence, a knowing they’d never suspect. the dark coat of my outward introspection sometimes haunting, alluring— the reason behind the constant glimmer in my eyes. alas, my blackbird is singing again. it’s time to fly.