When a loved one departs
Winter submerges our hearts in snow
Our nights become tearful
Our mornings mournful
But then
Spring inevitably arrives
Bringing along sun and life
If the sun
Doesn’t melt away
The snow engulfing our hearts
It’s we who won’t let it
It’s we who reject life
For we equate
The death of a loved one
To the death of ourselves
During the past few months
The discomfort, the homelessness, homesickness
Contaminated the places I was in
Making me move from one room to the next
One city to another
Now it has spread to my veins
I feel stiffness enveloping my limbs
Like this body is no longer mine
Changing places is not enough anymore
I feel the urge to change my clothes
Yet even that doesn’t ease away the suffocation
Because what I need is to get out of this skin!
I have no option but to succumb and resign
To the dull reality that
I have no home
I have no self
I have no peace
Yet I can’t relinquish the hope
That one day I’ll have what I need
I’ll be my own home
I’ll cultivate a self that I love being
And I’ll build my own fountain of everlasting peace
who am i without writing?
who are my friends if not words?
lately i’ve been actively
straying away from this page
sabotaging myself
away from my joy in life
writing is the very meaning
of my existence
through it, and only it,
can i know myself and
make sense of my world
so why am i not writing?
what part of me is trying
to steal this away from me?
what part of me can be so opposed to me
that it dares targeting my source of purpose?
it’s been a year
since i started writing a novel
one month of writing
and eleven of passively yearning
to return to the page to free myself
from this fictional world that occupies
my every moment
i am bereaved, broken;
an orphan in this huge world,
a foreigner in my own body
and only words,
only the act of writing,
of imagining and reflecting,
can mend my pieces
and bring me back home
when i looked at the cloudy sky today,
i saw you smiling.
i closed my eyes in delight,
but i could still see the light.
my heart brimmed with love
like a cup filling from the ocean.
it connected me with you,
and with God, too.
now i feel a delicious togetherness;
an unceasing lovingness.
it comes from God,
and it has the shape of your smile.
I was born here,
But is this my home?
If it is—if it must be—
Then why doesn’t it feel like so?
When I travel,
I don’t feel like an outsider
As much as I do in my own hometown.
Yet when the flight lands back here,
I feel as though my heart is a jewel
Being placed back into its safe box
Like this land is two open palms
That await my arrival
And spread to embrace me
Into eternal safety.
I must accept
That I am forever torn
Between being from but not of,
Being part here and part elsewhere.
On a plane, I am nowhere and everywhere all at once.
I am not the person time and space dictate that I am. Instead, I am a combination of all the versions of myself that I have embodied in the 18 years of my human existence. It’s 2017 rather than 2019—my happiest year rather than my most challenging yet; it’s a long summer vacation rather than a fleeting spring break; I’m going to a new city and sleeping in a hotel room rather than home in my own bed; I’m content rather than floating in a sea of melancholy; and instead of completely lost, I am grounded in my trance of not being in one fixed spot on the planet. Instead of it being a few weeks before my 19th birthday, it’s a few weeks after my 30th; instead of anxiously standing at the beginning of my life, I’m in the middle with the satisfaction of having fulfilled significant accomplishments and lived some of my dreams; instead of being just a student struggling with her sense of self, I am the strong independent woman that knows, accepts, forgives and respects herself enough to cast away the shadow of darkness that had been weighing over her for way too long.
On a plane, I am no one and everyone all at once.
Focus on this precise moment. Every single instant. Just stay here. Ground yourself. You have nothing to worry about. As long as you stay in the given moment, you won’t feel that drowning feeling. Just stay here. You’re safe here. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to know everything about who you are; you don’t need to have your whole future figured out. It’s okay not to know; it’s fine not to feel strong and confident sometimes. There are periods in life that are for stillness, and there are periods for action in which doing things feels effortless because it’s the right time to set things in motion. Right now you’re in the stillness stage. Don’t worry about the rest. You’ll rise. Those ideas you’re receiving will materialize. You just observe. It’ll all come together perfectly.
I prefer detaching myself from where I am
Erasing the sharp edges of time and space
By concentrating on a screen or a book
And not looking at the clock
To take myself off this place and find my soul elsewhere
this house is huge
filled with empty space
i can feel the rhythm of my heart
i can almost hear the echo of my breath
mom and dad
are out of town
my mind can’t stop wondering
if this is how dead our house would be
when they’re gone
on a one way ticket
to
the other side
i can’t bear the thought
my throat is clogged with a lump of tears
what is life
without mom sitting in the living room?
what is life
without dad’s loud laughter in the afternoon?
