a daylight dream

  It was 2017. it was the late summer of 2017 that I heaved in this airplane, dreading my return. my whole body ached in desperation, every atom pleading me to stay right in that airport and never turn back. it was 2017 when I prayed for a miracle so vehemently that time stood still for a while, and it was nothing but God’s mercy that pushed me to where I am right now. it was God’s mercy that made me endure six years of fighting so hard to protect my heart.  it was only Him.. and now I’m here again, doing what I should have done so long ago. every breath out in this airplane is countered by a rainfall. I can’t stop myself from crying, from feeling this heart beat a little bit differently. it’s racing. pumping with something more than just blood.  freedom . alas, my freedom. it feels like an inevitable leap into the unknown. I’ve been having those incessant, wicked dreams of free falling into an abyss, a labyrinth of all my monstrous fears awaiting me. everyone has  ...

there are only hours left, and the only thing I want to keep doing is stay invisible. stay in the gloaming silence of being out of reach. slipping away smoothly, making no sound, till one day I’m just not here. I keep telling my learners “ you won’t feel it when I leave ”. one day, they’ll be here again, and I’ll be gone.  my name will be a distant echo in the daylight sunshine. something to remember slightly. a remembrance that never lingers, I hope. I just wonder what could have happened if I had been more prominently alive in this world. just imagine how it would be if I could hear and feel every single heart tear apart at the thought of me leaving. how grateful I am that my presence had always been fleeting, almost incomprehensibly inexistent. with this subtle existence, it still hurts, tremendously so.  I’ve always dreaded goodbyes. it’s never been that difficult as it is now.  I’ve said goodbye to every single tree I love. every single cloud. why am I tearing is wha...

the waterfalls of your unbroken gaze your love in some sacred space the glimpses of you that still stay in a heart that has found its place now would you tell me what it takes to fall into the death of days to be somewhere in this starry haze your river of light parting infinite ways waterfalls the length of your arms and the crimson shades in my face I sway dancing towards the flight  of falling into your tightest embrace what love is without your touch is my heart without a blackbird’s song a winter so pronounced  in the hopeless name of being strong and I’ve let out so many  oh s and I’ve let out so many tears won’t you let this raindrop reach its home of ocean beds so deep so dear is this rose blooming with thorns that scar in fields of snow and storms and wars and did you ever see light hanging silent in brutal dark akin to a waterfall of stars and a million reveries that live forevermore.

  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.

  I think I’m allowed to be strong now. and God, isn’t that petrifying? there’s so much rage in every single atom in my bones. I could slam into things and watch them get destroyed. those eyes can pierce into his cruelty and undress them into fierce nakedness that he’d find nowhere to hide.  I see you . and he’d run. there’s a strength they’ve never seen before.    a once volatile, fragile little thing holding on to the softest rose petals has turned into a colossal storm. my breaths have become so heavy, dense and solid with accusations and weaponised punch lines. it’s vast how far pain could go. I’m glad I’m enraged. it hurts to say it— but I missed it. it’s like I’ve been looking for my rage for such a long time and it hits home to feel it, like a missing running vein in my system has sparked into life, streaming forcefully, bruising everything in its wake. I don’t mind. my eyes tear up now, partly for all the things I’m excited about, and partly for all the other...

  I need to remember to be angry. I need to remember that all these years, I’d learned helplessness and to hope against hope that things would be better. I’d learned that it was only divine intervention that would do— and nothing I’d do would amount to anything. that may be true in one way, but it isn’t on the other side of the coin. I need to keep doing something. the moment I return back to how it was like before, I’d fall back to forgiveness. I’d fall back to forgetting the pain, the only thing that I need to be remembering if not actively recalling every moment of the day.  I’m not supposed to forgive right now. I’m not supposed to deny how much I’ve been betrayed. I’m not supposed to discard my rights to live in kindness and empathy. It’s my right to have expectations for my life and to want things, to actually  need  things and never feel guilty about it. it seems that everything I had learned all these years have broken me so much. and it saddens me that every...

it’s been days of returning home to a melancholy so cantankerously foreign. the melancholy of a dissolving future, an annihilation of vivid dreams, the dissolution of what was once real. it’s been days of not being able to eat a morsel of food without feeling the gnawing pain at the pit of my stomach. the sparkle in my eye fading from suddenly not giving a damn about most of the things I cared so much about before. there’s a screaming inner child in me. she can’t take it anymore. she wants to  leave . it feels easy in theory. I could just pack my bags and leave, find myself in an airplane arriving in the bitterness of November and to all this calming snow.    the coldness would freeze my anger for a while, the grey skies would turn the vividness of all these conflicting thoughts into a monocolour scheme. I’d feel calmer, for sure. more stable. I know I’ll be okay. at least much better than here. the hardest thing perhaps is the fact that I must give up on love— and love m...