i dig through my black leather purse, whose home is permanently on my shoulder. i cant find a lip balm. i find though, a book i have been allegedly reading (mistborn by brandon sanderson), my tattered wired headphones, a lighter, and winston cigarettes from my time in europe (because it doesn’t count there). but what happens when you bring the vice home and it still sits in your purse? it tempts me but i remember Augustus Waters saying “you put the killing thing right between your teeth but you don’t give it the power to do its killing”. i think i keep the pack in my purse to prove to myself that i can be strong. who knew a book i read in middle school could still teach me things about the world, and myself. i don’t smoke.

what a week its been.

who are we if not what we leave behind, and who will we be when we finally pick up the pieces? who are we if not the way a person remembers us?

i begin to wonder who you were then, before you became the person standing in front of me. a stranger whom i don’t know of, other than what you present to me. what are your stars and the imaginary lines between them. there is a multitude within you, in the way your eyes dart across the room with delicacy and you keep a pen in your back pocket for a fortuitous thought. i can see her in the way you always handle your mug and the tapping of your worn-in boots. do we frequent the same park benches? sometimes i wonder how many times we had been in the same room before today, a divine regularity we will never know of. does the necklace that lives on your collarbone remind you of someone you miss? the way you fiddle with it between your painted fingertips reminds me of the way i do. kinship in intuition, in the innateness of our habits. i wonder if you like to braid your hair and blades of wheatgrass because you miss your mother’s touch. is it pure coincidence and a writer’s mind, or a faithful longing of the soul that i feel. i listen to you speak and i see the weight of your own universe. i see it resting on your shoulders and i see how it lifts when you begin to speak about a thing you wonder of. how easy is it to get to know another person, if you listen more than you speak. human interaction becomes an art with attention paid. you might find a close friend in the cashier behind the counter, your lover in line at the same grocery store. it is not the goal to make sure we all think the same, but that we may learn from one another. isn’t it?

it is a liberation to learn. from others. from ourselves. from the world.

the place you grew up and the place you are in now. maybe they are the same place. maybe they could not be more distinct in kind. sometimes, you feel like a stranger in a familiar place. sometimes your best days may feel like yesterday, and sometimes like someone else’s memory. what happens when you have found the north star but you do not know how to reach it? i imagine, you must cling on to every glowing ball of hot gas that leads you there, leaping across them like monkey bars. you are nothing without the love and the loss that forges you from the embers of such fire. you are only who you are because of the roads you have walked and something the religious call fate. the constellations preach of a link between us, and how we find ourselves at the junction of everyone we have ever met. how we cannot be ourselves, without the links that bind us all. but the stars argue, that you must first be bright on your own. it is what you add to the world that makes you part of the galaxy, something bigger than yourself.

this is for the man with the guitar at the duomo, who reminded me of a song i will now never be able to forget (have you ever seen the rain). how i want to thank him for curating the perfect night for me, young, swaying in the hot air, smoke on my breath, mumbling the words with him. how i will remember a complete stranger every time i hear the song.

for the one who wrote a note in a book i thrifted, a person i will never know anything about but their handwriting. i have always had a certain inclination to bide well with strangers. for a long time, it seemed as though there was always an open invitation floating above my head. maybe because there is, more often than not, an empty seat at my table. i hold the conversations close to me, although most have never gone further than a single interaction. the words stay with me longer than i like to admit. “i have seen your eyes in a dream” a waiter tells me (corny). “keep that with you forever”, someone the airport tells me as i scribble in my journal. what of the little girl that told me about her dreams of being an astronaut.

but likely so, just as fast as you had gotten to know a stranger, you part ways at an intersection. all you are left with is one fond memory and a silent prayer that they will be well for the rest of their days. the secret hope that maybe they will carry you around the same way you carry them.

for you do not need a story, or even a name, to be remarkable.

it is a liberation, to be a stranger to someone else. a star within their constellation.

“You are the people from the sea”

Not some foreign foe, but Greece’s own returning soldiers became the fulfillment of a dreaded threat. A myth of warriors that will plunder and pillage villages. This line transformed the movie for me, transformed Odysseus for me. A character who plucks his bow to warn deer during a hunt, suddenly revealed to be the self-proclaimed rogue.

He says that when he left the belly of the horse, and opened the gates of Troy, he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night. I realize, that on his journey home, he was consistently terrified of reaching it because of what he had done. Often, as I watched him make decisions of undeniable hubris (blinding the Cyclops and tying himself to the mast of his ship to listen to the deadly Siren’s song), I wondered why a great hero would do such an unwise thing. And at his own homecoming, he confesses to Penelope that his deceptive trickery brought the downfall of civilization. I found it ironic, as he spoke in the disguise of a beggar, deceiving once again all who surrounded him. I also found it ironic that Zeus’s law, the sacred unwritten rule of hospitality to strangers (and beggars), allowed him into the queen’s vicinity, allowed him to fulfill his ultimate plan of massacring the suitors and saving the throne for his son. The same law that he broke when his ruse made way into Troy. He seemed to have learned on his journey, that, “To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world-entire. Including his home". I cannot help but wonder, if he had always known. And if he hadn’t, when was the exact moment it came to light? What was the exact moment that made it clear to him, that it was his idea that had broken the harmony of man?

The Trojan Horse becomes a symbol of misplaced trust, of danger where the naked eye cannot see, of pride. But I also think, Odysseus teaches us in the end that dawn will break over the darkened world one day. His coming to terms with mistakes he had made, his commitment to traveling West to honor his fallen men, is a story of redemption. It is up to you, to believe what Odysseus tells you about himself, and what his character informs you of the world around us. Did he truly atone for his sins, and what of the sins he did not know were sins when he committed them? Was he a good man, in the end? Did he reclaim his humanity? I think what makes him so compelling is his moral complexity, the juxtaposition of love and cruelty that is disproportionally out of necessity than not. I am impelled to make the argument that Argos would be so loyal to a man of righteousness. In the end, I may be inclined to trust the dog’s judgement.

Another thing. Amongst the cannibalistic giants and the one eyed shepherd, the witch and whirlpool, the most dangerous of them all was the island of the lotus-eater. Calypso gave Odysseus the gift of ignorance. Oh, how sometimes I long to eat the lotus myself. As long as he is fed the lotus flower, an early narcotic of sorts, he forgets. He forgets his home, his wife, his son, and his purpose. The monsters stole his men from him, Calypso stole the most precious of things: time. For seven years, she feeds him the lotus flower and he lives on her island in ultimate bliss. Seven years he could have watched his son grow. I imagine he had never been more comfortable in his life, completely unconcerned with the real world. She claims that he was happy. Yet, in his incessant amnesia, something pulled him to the shore. He collected pieces of what used to be his ship from the ocean and put them aside. For what? He did not know yet. A yearning for people he could not remember, and a place he used to call home, ate away at him. He built a raft and Calypso freed him of the island as he began to remember. Not before she asked him to stay with her, that she would grant him immortality if he did. Still, Odysseus went off on a favorable wind and crashed onto the rocky coastline of Ithaca. He was content on the island, as the days went by, out of his reach. Calypso, in his captivity, gave him the gift of clarity. He discovered that his truest desire was to go home, despite the ease of staying.

So, I am left wondering after watching this interpretation of a centuries old epic poem, a few things.

• what is the bow only you could string? the thing you would be recognized for no matter how unrecognizable you have become.

• would you stay on Calypso’s island, in exchange for ignorance and bliss? would anything compel you away form ultimate comfort like it did Odysseus?

• what is keeping you from going home, and if you are home, from embracing it wholly?

• what are the sirens singing for you? the promises you failed to keep and the things you want most, that you cannot have?

• who’s judgement do you trust the most, and who would wait for your return no matter how long it took? perhaps even, who’s return would you wait for?

sometimes the feeling of absence creeps up on you, of late nights and breakfast in the morning full of clattering cutlery and shuffling footsteps. i notice that a house does not feel like a home until it is occupied by fond memories. until you can remember laughter bouncing off every wall. until you cannot bear to leave without ripping pieces of the kitchen tile to whisk away with you.

it is quiet intentional, the way paint can absorb the happenings of a room, how the popcorn ceiling stays because it becomes a shared topic of disdain. an organic conversation starter. it is natural to yearn, isn’t it? for a room full of a love that can only be found there. a group of people that find themselves in you and you in them. only when sentences are completed and meals are shared in the room, does the old carpet feel softer and the rotting wood in the balcony becomes acceptable. when open invitations that are taken wholeheartedly and the door is always open. there is a reason sitcoms take place at home, and i think this must be it.

if your hand me down toyota’s windows can still roll down and the stereo can still drown out your terrible singing along to justin bieber, if your hair can still blow in the wind, and it is just the size for dancing, it might feel like it could fly you to space. but without someone in the passenger seat, it might just feel an old toyota again after a while.

i think about how, in childhood, i don’t remember having to make friends. how i stumbled upon them, and a shared desire to go down the same slide made sure we did. in adulthood, it becomes as close to impossible as relationships can get. we lost the playground, and therefore we lost the “stumbling upon”.

i sit in third spaces because i secretly hope i will see someone reading my favorite book and i can strike up a conversation. or we all sit in the clacking of keyboards and flipping of pages, and the mere presence of others fills the empty seat across from me. i try to find the playground, where is it these days? where is it when you’re 25 in a small city?

most times, i fill the seat just fine. i argue i am most comfortable in my own company, but that comfort takes advantage of me and i forget that the company of someone else can be so fulfilling. i write a lot, but what if i found someone to engage in conversation. how marvelous would it be to hear someone else’s point of view, to learn from another lived experience. once in a while, that voice in the back of my head speaks up a bit louder. it asks me if i would like to text an old friend, and i do. it asks me to go back to a place i used to love, and i do. the coffeeshop i used to work at, my father’s home, new jersey (where i grew up), and i realize that the voice is driven by memories. i realize that my memories cannot possibly all comprise of myself. i realize that i need to make friends.

but after your realize, how do you do it? how do you find the places you belong and the rooms you fit into? where do you go to be accepted, to have conversations that will change your life and cry and laugh relentlessly?

the absence of walls. a rooftop on the edge of the world, my breath evaporating from my lungs like salt water. i watch the beautiful monotony of life from above, grocery store goers and espresso sippers. italy is a place that seems devoted so utterly to slowness. this home belonged to a man named ciro, who hung photos of himself breathing fire in the living room and enough bottles of olive oil in the kitchen that i could drink one like a bottle of wine and he would never miss it. so that’s what i did.

“only pick two” i trot around the aisles closely squinting at the titles, looking for the letter M. fluorescent lights cast shadows on the patterned carpet and my eyes will inevitably struggle to adjust to the night sky of the parking lot. finally, on my tippy toes, i hand the man behind the desk Marley & Me. his magnetic badge reads Blockbuster.

arabic spoken too quickly, i wonder if in another lifetime i would have no problems engaging in these conversations with strangers that i was supposed to know. i do a double take and find that it is not a hallucination: a camel on the shore being led by a teenage boy. on my tongue, i taste a banana slushie and i taste home, for the first time in my (then) 22 years. i often recall gaza as a compilation of times in which i found myself on the floor laughing, my ribs flaring in true and honest pain.

an empty studio apartment with a ceiling you could hit your head on if you got up too fast. the only thing we had to our name, a twin sized mattress and an espresso machine.

these are rooms i will never step in again. these are rooms that do not exist outside of my memory, anymore.

The Journal Prompt: write about a room you probably will never step into again.

walk towards nothing at all.

walking just to feel the ground beneath you crumble gently.

take your shirt off and lay on the hood of your old blue camry.

feel the burn of metal and the sun seeping into your body like it recognizes you.

let the quiet earth take all your worries away and leave you anew.

do you ever wonder what freedom is to a california condor, who only knows what freedom is to us?

i crane my neck painfully to watch his wings hover above me like a raincloud. i am in his shade, until he disappears over the edge of the pacific ocean. an unremarkable moment i will never forget.

if you listen carefully, the redwoods will whisper to you how grand they are and how you do not need to be. how you are allowed to be ordinary among them. how only if you are happy, will life be a proper good waste. imagine, what you would see if you slowed down to walk.

waste your life with poetry on a park bench, with art nobody will ever see.

waste it on watering a garden that will die in the winter anyway.

waste your life on books you will probably forget once you turn the page.

waste your life trying to surf and being terrible at it, flying kites, and doing a crossword puzzle.

because everything does not need to mean something tremendous.

what is a long hike to a waterfall if not the most indisputable waste of life?

until you give it meaning.

but living is marvelous on its own

and not everything requires a stately reason for doing it.

i revoke the idea that we could ever

justify life through productivity, but instead through joy.

through laughter that reaches your eyes

and even the lump in your throat that hurts until you cry

because there is sweet relief found in it.

only the things you cannot see truly exist. God exists, and the things you feel so deep in your soul you mistake it for something you read in a fable. only beautiful memories that you wish to linger within forever. only regrets. music that reminds you of a lover you never got to love because you were too afraid to. waste your life on mistakes. the universe spins if it works out and it spins just the same if it does not. streams will continue to pour over cliffs and stars will continue to shoot.

when you leave that peaceful riverside in the mountains

do you still feel at peace?

or was it just the place,

never yourself.

be human, above all else. that is a true sensation. to feel and be at peace despite all the horrors of the world. to live, in complete oblivion to how someone else might think life must be spent.

i argue you must waste your life, for you only have one and it is yours to waste.

- June 2026

what a year of learning, 24 was.

i learned, that you won’t remember the terrible chapters of your life the way that you won’t ever forget the magnificent ones. fortunately, a deep pit of anxiety is not as memorable as laughing until your belly hurts.

i think the way to save yourself from never-ending trepidation is realizing you only control the way you react. unrealistically, my only goal for this year is to feel. i want to deeply ingrain into my memory, the way my skin naturally warms under a flowering dogwood tree. the way it prickles under the hot July sun and suddenly i am calm. how my heart beat slows in my husband’s arms. i need to remember what joy resembles in my body. i need it to come back to when i begin to forget. the only thing that matters is what we do with the cards we are dealt, because everything just is.

everything just is, no matter how profound or ordinary it may seem to me. i relinquish the control i perceived i had over my life, for i have finally realized it was all an illusion. i give it up to God, for it was always His. i am now free. and i hope to never forget the deep sigh of relief that i took the moment i organized those thoughts together in my mind.

this year i relearned, as an adult, that nobody is coming to save you. the natural order of the universe dictates that you are born alone and you will face death alone. that just is. you will come across people that will accompany you on your journey in-between. if you are lucky enough, you will love so deeply, that you cannot remember a life before them and it hurts to imagine one without them. but, you must never lose yourself in the feelings you have for someone else. when you are fighting your own mind, only you can pull yourself out of the deep end. this comes to my next lesson of the year: loving (and knowing) yourself.

i constantly miss the simplicity of being younger, but what a privilege it is to get to know myself at every age i become.

i drink my morning latte in the same mug with the green handle every morning. i found my signature scent this year. it is earthy, like black tea and vanilla. my most read genre of book feels like it could come to life but probably won’t. i still thrift all my clothes because i prefer it that way. i collect vintage bags and trinkets line my shelves. i love to craft with my hands. i am deeply sentimental (so i will always stop for a souvenir). it is enthralling to wake up and recognize the woman in the mirror as yourself. there are parts of me who do not sway from who i have always been. my eyes and my hair belong to every version of me. i have always picked at my cuticles when my nerves get too high. i don’t plan anything out and i am infamously unorganized. i am susceptible to avoidance and i hate confrontation. i chronically lose my glasses. but despite the sins of your past, you hope that someone also may call you their close friend. that animals may feel solace in your presence. that strangers don’t forget you immediately on their way out. you hope that you are a good person. that is the ultimate goal, isn’t it?

i also learned this year that when life is the teacher, you will always fail the class. not because it is just that dreadful and evil, but because you can never prepare well enough. you can not anticipate the questions, let alone the answers. it is purely a learning experience. you just live as best as you can. to the best of your knowledge and to the best of your ability. you smell the morning dew and feed the birds at your balcony. you hug the people you love so tight. you laugh until your belly hurts and you cry so hard your eyelashes are soaked. you experience the wonders of the earth. and when it gets too hard to breathe, you always have napalm skies and your hometown streets. you have photo albums to flip through. you have the village of friends and companions you found on this in-between journey. you have yourself. you have music and you have your leatherback journal. you have your words. you turn off your phone and suddenly, you have everything that matters in the world right at your fingertips.

experience life through the way you feel, not the things you do.

until next year, this was proof of life at 24.

turn the speakers up and continue to waltz around in the kitchen while you prepare a meal you won’t eat. it will let itself in and you won’t even notice. akin to an unwelcome guest.

despair is my insipid roommate that won’t do the dishes. it larks about in true asinine fashion, making a mess it expects you to clean. the taps are left running and towels are on the bathroom tiles. it left glass on the floor when it broke into your home. you cannot let it matter to you. you cannot fall for it this time. for if you wipe and polish, it will never leave.

it will wander the halls of your brain, but you give it nothing of yourself. you cannot stop it from entering, but you can control what it makes you do.

i sit by a babbling brook on a pile of rocks because touching the earth is a natural remedy for sadness.

pebbles dig indents into the soles of my feet as i walk across the stream with bare feet. the cold water pierces my bones. the hot sun burns the top of my shoulders. i think about what i was like as a little girl, and how i can still feel her ponytail swing behind me sometimes. i think about the person i grew into, the skin that is mine now was mine then. i often wish i could meet her, but i am her. the version of myself before the world felt unkind.

but a part of me is who i am now because of who i was then.

a part of me is who i am trying not to be.

i think about who i was as a teenager. i am falling back into her bad habits. god am i predictable.

a part of me is who i love.

i think about who i became when i found the person that told me i wasn’t as terrible as i thought i was.

a big part of me is who i do not want to be.

i see her in the mirror these days, looking back at me with a lit cigarette.

when i feel myself slip back into that costume, i remember that i would prefer to feel than to forget.

at some point, the blood will no longer serve as proof that i have been wounded. the snake bite will seep venom into my veins if i refuse to find a quiet place to heal.

despair can visit once again, but what if this time around, i know myself a bit better?

i don’t have to run or hide. this time, i can stay in my home. in my mind. i know who i am.

by divine creation, my life is precisely as arduous as it should be. meaning, i have no choice but to survive because it was made so that i can.

what if i was resilient this time?

i sit with the trees to learn from them, how to be sturdy in the eye of the tornado. i watch a bumblebee frolic around wildflowers, to learn the art of self-sufficiency because i learned early that nobody is coming to save you. i study the soil and the skies with immense admiration. as minuscule as a fire ant and as grand as a falcon, there is a particular cycle of life that which every creature knows it must follow. to not only survive, but keep the rest of us alive too.

because in the end, we all return to dust. what lives on is love. it has always been about love.

this time, despair will come and bring its indivisible sisters. gloom and agony. but they will not prevail. for you know who you are today much more than you did before. stay beneath the maplewood, and you will not be lost. i tell myself.

life is endlessly difficult, but that is what makes it worth living. i tell myself.

i found God in the time between uncertain life and certain death.

my father lays in a synthetic blue bed and wires weave a wicker basket around him. i force myself to have faith, for if my belief in an afterlife were to waver, i would be annihilated. if faith unwrapped her sticky tentacles from around my body, it would cease to exist. conviction eats away at my brain, until all that is left is the part that would never doubt in a higher power. The Beneficent, The Supreme Bestower, The All-Knowing, The Giver of Life and Creator of Death. when the ground gives out from beneath your feet, what is it that feels like your tightrope? what do you cling to? tell me, i’ll try anything.

i found God in a hospital waiting room. there is intimacy, sharing deep pain with strangers who sit in the same hideous couches for weeks alongside you. the agony being a presentation of love, we all know the wistful way it feels. it becomes a place where we become familiar and kind faces, who pray concurrently to never see one another again. i begin to ask how her husband is, how his mother is, day after day. “no news is better than bad news”. marigolds and tulips add color to barren rooms. when all i know of you is your heartache, i know that what we have in common is enough. the air smells like gas station coffee, the same kind my father drinks. i wonder when we’ll be able to share a conversation over mini pancakes and scrambled eggs, again.

i look up at fluorescent box lights, as if they could replace the sun. as if a great albatross would fly down and snatch the lump out from within my throat. my eyes close so the tears would not blind me. its okay to not be okay. i keep forgetting that. so, i beg myself to feel, i walk around the aging red building and look through all the windows at stretchers and white coats. my fingers trace rugged brick and my lungs fill with smoke. week after week, meal after meal, friends become family in a hospital waiting room. the crowd warms me, and the aroma of cardamom from a thermos of chai gently draws me out from my usual reticence. we sit in the dark after visiting hours on those hideous couches, with flashlights. i found God in the breaths we took between paragraphs (in which i was allowed to forget for just a moment), as we took turns reading aloud the story of One Thousand and One Nights. the village i never knew i had lines a round table. silence is now a blessing i do not need to understand. we color and make paper airplanes out of gum wrappers, as we pass time and pray in the hospital waiting room. i cannot wait to gather the same, in my living room or by the lake. i imagine we will still be reading the same book.

because God’s plan is not mysterious at all. i argue that there are greater riddles in much lesser things. in that, i find secret relief.

in my newfound sovereignty, the white sheet became a blanket. it became a prayer mat or a mere cloth. it is true that you don’t know how much faith you have in Allah until you are forced to rely on it alone.

amidst calamity there exists a love that would otherwise remain unknown.

This is a reminder that this month is not only for the ones who are “ready” for it, but for those who are wildly distracted with matters of this world, who are tired and restless at the same time, who don’t know what to do at Ramadan’s doorstep. It is for those who show up. It is for the sincere, for only Allah swt can truly judge a person.

This Ramadan, I find my heart is tugging me towards the virtue of solitude. What we cannot find in the company of others, we will surely find in the company of Allah swt. In pangs of isolation, I choose to believe that I am being divinely set up to dig deeper within myself for what I am looking for elsewhere. I sit here late at night (because I broke my fast with a cafe miel), with only my refrigerator light and a flickering candle, and I think.

I think about how my forehead feels in sujood. I think about how sometimes, it is uncomfortable. The thick carpet digs into my skin. But after a few minutes pressed up against the floor, all I can ponder upon is how small I am in the grand scheme of everything. I remember how insignificant my daily anxieties are, like the itchy carpet, messes to clean, and work to do. I am reminded that there are few truly important things in this life and how those often go untended to. My piggy bank of duaas has become full now that Ramadan has returned, and suddenly it must be cracked open. Suddenly, they are pouring out of me, and I forget about my physical body entirely. If I could describe the feeling of nothing, it would be the way I feel during sujood when the dunya (all of my trivial worldly desires, problems, weaknesses, and lack of clarity) finally catches up to me. I feel nothing in my body, and far too much in my brain, until my eyelids forcefully flutter open as my forearms begin to give in to the weight of my upper body. Everything feels so much lighter, like birds flying off my backbone. The piggy bank is empty again.

Whether or not my prayers are answered now, or in another life, does not matter as much as the fact that I finally regained that moment of lucidity where I remember what my purpose truly is & what it is not.

It is surreal to feel an emotion so far within your chest, that you forget about your tangible existence. It is nothing, but everything all at once.

I think of all the ways I could be a better person, and the list has no end. That’s natural, isn’t it? Realizations are important, but we need to bring them to the other side of consciousness.

I find most chit chat over iftar tables to be condemnatory towards everyone but oneself. How peaceful would the world be if the hypercritical were to turn their habits onto themselves. How must we find ways to put realizations into action, to be better people? On our personal prayer mats, alone with our Lord, away from eyes and ears. When productivity is on display, it holds little depth. It is so hard to have conversations of discipline and faith with yourself, much more taxing than it is to pretend like you are perfect to the outside world. Choose the harder route, I want to believe it is simpler once you are a couple of miles in.

I found an abundance of faith in realizing that I can stumble into Ramadan, I do not have to stroll effortlessly through its doors. A meal-prepped suhoor and a daily lecture series are not the only ways to maximize the month. I will come upon what I was meant to find during the month of mercy, at any rate. I have found quite a lot already, sitting here alone in complete silence on night 6.

i muddle fresh mint leaves in a modest glass cup. my little brother picked them from the backyard, grunting as if he was not accustomed to his designated role in the family now. “one sugar or two?” i ask, like a broken record. arabic letters lay crooked yet comfortable on my tongue. it is an inviolable ritual to slow down and gossip (shout about politics, marriage, and education) among multiple generations, over black tea and a bowl of toasted pumpkin seeds. its a hot summer evening in the midwest. my father’s fingers are tapping to the faint hum of a fayrouz song, barely discernible behind multiple loud conversations. my cousin is cutting a watermelon and the kids throw pita bread to the geese, squealing with some sort of excited fear. i finally take a seat with my legs crossed. the scent of cracked cardamom and sweet cake rusk gently transports me to a home i have never known.

an array of unstacked plastic chairs behind the house is proof of life. proof of a delightful evening, spent with family and friends and neighbors. a red bath towel is a makeshift cushion, and literally anything can be a side table (most commonly the grass, often a bucket turned on its top or someone’s folded knee). empty coffee cups and a distinct smell in the air, from that one over-cologned uncle who will never quit no matter what the western cigarette boxes warn against. the men who fill these seats contradict headlines alike, in the immigrant family you might belong to. they take turns making stupid jokes, laughing, and coughing. they work hard and love harder. the women share recipes and discuss their racist encounters of the week.

“the soccer coach says that Osama is not fitting in well”

nobody wonders why.

we turn to look at him, 6 years old, kicking around a basketball with his cousin. inhale in, exhale the smoke. somber moments don’t last long (because we’re incredibly avoidant), but they never really cease to exist. they are always there. will we ever feel at home, again? can this be home, enough?

back to the music, the deck of cards, the fruit, the laughter. the plastic chairs. things that may have been the exact same, had we never left the homeland.

What a refreshing reminder of what America looks like behind the closed doors of who really lives in this country. From the falling power lines and crumbling roofs of the common folk, working in the fields and behind a street cart, it seems puerto rico is a window into intentional neglect by this country. I did not understand a word, but I saw the message just the same. The question of, who gets to be called an American?

This is not a pop-culture think piece about Benito, but I am referencing the show as a pipeline to talk about the state of the world. He reminded me of the plastic chairs and the absolute joy being human has the potential to be. That song and dance ultimately does not need a translation.

I would argue that we often forget how to be human, when differences are labeled negative. It is crucial to contrast one another. If every puzzle piece was shaped the same, they could never come together. It is an inherent truth of the universe that diversity is at the center of the human race and eurocentrism will be the death of us. we must not translate, dull down, and westernize. a reminder to myself first, that my name is Amal (not Emma). the missing piece is always, do you see your similarities enough to fight for someone else’s right to exist? In the same vein, how is it incomprehensible to listen to 15 minutes of Spanish at a football game but Taco Tuesday is tomorrow at the office? Alongside empathy and basic education on geography, it seems common sense has also escaped us. To be human we must be different, but to be American we must all be the same? That is the contradictory message received from the latter.

I have so many questions and I have a laundry list of concerns for the future. I argue, no matter where we come from, the plastic chair is the common denominator that matters. A universal symbol of leisure, of community, of embracing differences while discovering similarities, and creating a life worth living when the odds have never been in your favor.

Be the puzzle piece you are supposed to be, or we won’t ever get to see the bigger picture. and f*ck ICE just in case I haven’t said it enough yet.

It hunts down jagged mountain ranges and salty ocean tides, just the same. It preys on large hearts and moonlight smiles. Not a creature, a pebble, may turn in its midst. It comes in many forms, and we hear over the light of a bonfire, how our parents escaped it bravely. There are theories that it yearns for what its targets possess, for the ability to love truly and honestly, to be gentle and warm when winter comes. It is, above all, a thief in the night. We know it came from what it took, for it always takes life and the idea of opportunity. The modus operandi has remained the same for centuries, yet it has never been stopped. We wonder, as children, where the super heroes were. We learn as adults, that the red capes always belonged to places where this monster built its many lairs. In places that still remain the pinnacle of greater good. For this, some people believe it destroys in its envy, some people say it is nothing but a demon. It searches for a certain glimmer in the eyes (it seems), before it strikes relentlessly. For there is nothing of value to take from hatred and falsehood, it pursues a different genus of rich.

Rich in life, in intellect, in culture. It takes from them so that all they have is tea and a platter of fruit. Green or black, cardamom or muddled mint. Are they blood-red pomegranate seeds or softened violet figs, perhaps the secret fortune is golden mangos. It depends on where this anomaly decides to live for now, what will be served once it is gone. It takes, so that all they have left is their vessel, language and traditions. And then, it tries to take that too.

Legend calls this thing, war.

The question that never fails to create a lump in my throat is, what could have been? If survival was not the epitome of life. If war was not created by us, but truly was an other worldly being than we can blame the carpet bombing on. If nobody ever left.

Because when they left, war found them just the same. War has a new name in different places. I watch the long-necked geese cross our imaginary borders, marvel at them, and wonder what rights they have over human beings.

We come back to visit the places that war had once lived, in awe of what was left behind. A mud-house village with many names, with many faces. We find large hearts, bright eyes, and moonlight smiles. We find a pool of tears, nestled in the rubble of someone’s lifetime of work. We find that after all, children everywhere yearn to land on the moon, don’t they? Where do hopes and dreams go when there is nowhere to see them come to fruition? We find that, we were never strangers to begin with.

This time, we visit Afghanistan. The graveyard of empires. Dust is buried beneath fingertips, and bones rest beneath the dust. Bone-chilling cold paradoxes the warmest of people. The mountains whisper prayers and the birds sing a song of resilience through the city below. I have felt home only once before, and being here sent the same sensations down my spine. For in the corner of the spice shop, in valleys of red rocks herding their sheep, in steep alleyways, and resting under the branches of barren citrus trees, there is a love for life I recognized.

I recognized it from other places I have visited, where war once lived. I see parallels of tea and fruit. I see parallels of generosity, hospitality, that I have never experienced anywhere else because it cannot exist anywhere else. It is true that the people who have the least will give the most, maybe to be the person they once needed. Belly laughs fill the hazy air, from children who have known pain we cannot imagine. It fills me with deep regret, what it took to realize the beauty of this land. So, let this be all it takes for you. Rewrite the legends to say, be loud, scream from the rooftops. The truth is, the monster can only take if we look away. If we forget.

So do not forget the hands that serve you tea, and refuse to take your money. Whether it is the beating heart of Asia, or the rainforest of the Congo. Whether your cup is filled with the karkade of Sudan or the barrad of the Gaza Strip, the adani of Yemen or gas station coffee of urban America. Do not look away. Our struggle is connected, it always has been.

We remain online to “stay in touch with friends” but just because your middle school classmate posts occasionally about her new job and you comment under it does not make it so that you are connected. A follower is not a friend, and it is detrimental that we have gone so far as to say family.

What if we cold-called each other more often, so often it became regular. What if we wrote letters and sent mail, even just a text instead of a comment? Can we turn back to that also, if we turn back to analog. If we knew what true connection defined, we would no longer see Instagram as the solution, I think. If we stopped by each other’s homes for morning coffee often, if we killed off the culture of catching up, connection would be a whole new word in your vocabulary. The world keeps spinning whether or not you are on the apps, but it turns much slower and more intentionally when you aren’t scrolling. Is the reason we all feel like time flies because we spend so many of our precious hours in a different universe?

And what if I said that being totally and utterly unreachable is for the rich, because they don’t need the rest of the world.

They have created these apps to be addicting and necessary, because no matter how harmful they are, they do not harm them. I have ruminated on how liberating it would be if I only had the guts to deactivate everything forever. I imagine the grass would be greener, the air would smell like my favorite perfume, the birds would sing a little louder. But I also think, if you choose to only show up in person, will you be selling yourself short? Will you be at a disadvantage? Are we supposed to accept these alleged innovations, use them with caution, reject them completely? I find small businesses rely on going viral, it is ingrained in the concept of success. Can I afford to let go of the possibility that one day, hundreds of thousands of people will find me on Substack or on Instagram? Because how wonderful would it be to write for people, to post my art and do nothing else to make a living? Imagine how equally, increasingly, more wonderful it would be to go places without the need to show people you were there. To be offline is to risk your relevance, which has become equivalent with survival. Careers, relationships, opportunities have become built on the foundation of a social media feed. I can’t even begin to believe it when I think about it like that. A 12 second video you put out on the internet can monumentally change the trajectory of your life. It only depends on whether or not people like you. What does that line of thinking do to your mind? How does it make you think about yourself as a human being if your likeability and ability to follow trends becomes the subject of your own success and therefore, happiness? What does that do to the concept of humanity, when you become the face of a brand because they pay your bills?

So, I’ve begun resisting.

Turning back to libraries and burning CD’s to play in my car, film cameras and printing for photo albums that we can look through in 10 years. When you can’t control the music, life feels so much more exciting. It is more powerful to let songs and books find you rather than having them all at your fingertips in the form of an app to choose from. Doesn’t that apply to people too?

That golden finch that flew into the window above the cafe and fell

at my feet, I’ll never forget her eyes flattening.

I scribbled his name to test my ink levels for 16 years.

If he was just a cat, why is his absence

A void I can’t fill.

And what of the doe on the shoulder of the freeway and

The spider on the bottom of your shoe.

Do they not lay on the conscious

For you do not lay them to rest.

Let death be kinder

Than man*

And if man’s heart is the largest,

What fills the extra space?

Greed and waste

That a subway rat could not dream of.

A version of love

that another creature will always outweigh.

It costs us all the same to be gentle

But it costs more of us not to be, I think.

It seems it has cost the pigeons their humanity, that they are not doves.

This lump in my throat

Will grow so large

It chokes me straight to the grave

One night

when the moon calls for the wolves

And the red-bellied robin that often visits the balcony.

Is there a spectrum of grief and ignorance that souls lay on?

And if we are on the left end of loss then

I ask

Where do the deadline dogs go?

I ask

What makes a soul worth the pain of grief

And why must the buck stare down the barrel?

Turns out,

The apex predator is the weakest of them all

Because he has everything to lose

And all the decisions to make.

We put my childhood cat in the dirt one year ago today, in the backyard of my father’s cul-de-sac home. His empty corner on the couch makes me think about how much room he took up in my life. The only constant I've known since I was a young girl was that one-eared cat. He makes me wonder, what constitutes humanity (and therefore grief)? In the eyes of a quarter horse, and Smokey’s, I have seen more empathy than most of us, people. It reminds me of this poem by Althea Davis. I hope you ponder on the humanity of creatures beyond humans. Love them just the same. Grieve them just as much.

*And God
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go someplace
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.

- Althea Davis

PS: justice for pigeons!

but the earth swallows.

the air fills.

isn’t it simple how silkworms hatch and suddenly it’s spring. when did it all become so intricate…or was it this way all along? i believe our evergreen nostalgia for childhood stems from missing its blissful ignorance. if only simplicity were that simple, time would have surely halted when the pendulum stopped swinging. i would have had an eternity to get to know her. now all i have are dreams and my own name. i have the tree that cradles me like my mother.

my name means hope, and I have always wondered how my parents knew I would need the constant reminder.

laid on your doorstep

and in a fleeting decision

but you never noticed

because you were…on your phone! (doomscrolling)

or in your head,

‘everything sucks and people are terrible’.

and then you shook your head - declined it

because you didn’t want to get your clothes dirty

or there wasn’t enough time? (how long does it take to decide to make time to do the things you want to do)

you were scared

of the dark and what could have been.

curiosity feeds life.

routine feeds existence.

dance to the sound of your ringtone. don’t answer the calls, rip open the envelope.

flip a coin, swim in your jeans, climb the tree in your backyard that you have never seen from the top, take the dumpster kitten home, linger in the ordinary and hold your breath. the soul loiters on your kitchen counter, waiting to hear you hum as you bartend to your houseplants. it watches you play with sidewalk chalk and pick out a tattered t-shirt that make you feel like a kid again. tongue twister: you cannot have truly found yourself until you have tried every little thing you may find yourself within. maybe what you have been searching for all this time was a nod away.

become magnetic to whimsy. green caterpillars crawl up your fingers and you wish them good luck in their new life wearing kaleidoscope wings. they would do the same for you. and what of the dragonflies that shed their skeletons and fly out of the water. i love to make eye contact with small critters because it reminds me that we are all alive just the same amount life.

it is all a scavenger hunt for beauty and laughter. say yes, or you may lose the version of yourself that you were meant to be.

you’ll always remember your regret, it will die with you

alongside the memories.

i didn’t edit this piece because i’m not going to spontaneously combust if its not perfect. these are just my thoughts the way that they come off the pen.

           i am warm.
only candle lit
           not fire burning
body heat
not blood boiling.

i send forth shadows
in the remnants of a flame, 
                 not the light of a hundred lanterns. 

cast me into the     saffron red,
paint me in             faint yellows
as you weld me
into who you’d prefer for me to be. 

pull me by my strings
before they snap. 
you are the blower of glass,
i am fragile as required.

i’ll draw my last breath at your hand.
a steadfast inferno, at last

the phoenix will die
and i will be its final heir,
                but not at your demand. 

the world is ablaze. our time to lay hold of the torch has long arrived.

i think about how i am “american” as if i were not one impossible decision, two hundred dollars in my father’s back pocket, and a split-second away from life in a war zone. how is it that my lips taste the colonizer’s language more than my mother tongue? the letters pierce my fingertips as i write, as if paper fights back. where lies the balance between guilt and trust, between love and hate, between fire and water? it seems we have yet to learn from the past, but the future still lies in our hands. what a terrible fate it is to have turned a blind eye. much worse than holding on to the flames, i know that much.

i think about how now is precisely not the time to succumb to being the tangible example of a perfect victim, the digestible child of immigrants, the assimilable muslim, arab woman. identity becomes resistance when we don’t fit the picture-perfect frames laid out for us. we must keep the embers warm for as long as we can.

if the phoenix dies, just promise me we will survive. when the empire falls, i want to be there to see it.

- june 12th, 2025. what a time to mark in history.

i still collected the eggs every morning.

a squirrel with no tail would visit me regularly. i named him alvin. we would sit on the monkey bars and share a bowl of nuts (and an occasional snickers bar). spring and summer passed. he stopped visiting in the winter, and i told myself he must have moved neighborhoods. i learned that loss was not always death.

i had a funeral for every animal i ever lost. i dug a plot and picked wildflowers to place by graves. i grieved, the way children did - not for too long. there was always another creature to care for.

i, who have always known death, had yet to learn that human beings could die too.

when my rabbit grew old and the invisible entity took her away, my father told me she had gotten out because he had accidentally left the cage open. he tried his very best to protect me from the truth, every single time.

he could have never protected me from the death of my mother. i had yet to learn that death could take the person who gave me life.

over time, i discovered that death was always just around the corner, not in a morbid way. waking up that morning was the most pain i have ever known. but what’s strange is the way the pain fades, the way that i still see her in everything and nothing at all, at the same time. i turn a corner and smell her perfume in places she had never stepped foot in. her ring still nestles my index finger. my mother gave me the gift of heartache early on in my life, so that everything else i would come to experience could only be easier than losing her. i have learned in her absence as much as i have learned from her in presence. there is gratitude to be found amongst the hurt.

i, who have always known love.

i think about how lucky i must be that loss is painful, because what i had was once so precious. proof of life is the box of cassette tapes and the albums of photos. it is the streets i can still walk, that i once walked with them. my childhood home still stands. the trees are stilll there. most of all, i remember.

i think about how everything goes back to them, the ones i have adored and lost. i can hear them in music and silence. a song that reminds me of old friends. its strange how memories can blur the line between ache and comfort. the sound of a rooster crowing, of pages turning. i can close my eyes and go back in time. i could never be the person i am today if i didn’t have the echoes of her voice. the little glimpses in everyday life that feel like souvenirs.

what is more beautiful than that?

this piece was inspired by the title of Jacqueline Harpman’s “I Who Have Never Known Men” *

if i could watch the past year over again, i would like to flashback to all the times i’ve laughed until my ribs hurt. i would take myself back to a winter of cafe hopping and traveling to escape the midwestern cold, to a fall of embracing old friends and family. i watched my father reunite with his sister after 3 decades this october. i found deep love for new countries in january. those are moments i could watch on repeat forever. i would take myself back to a summer spent in new york city and a spring that began with my birthday again. i found many pieces of myself in the time i spent scouring the streets, writing in corners and watching the hot june sun rise over glass buildings. i also found pieces of myself in open fields and horse pastures, at 23. in january i started helping around a local barn, getting my hands dirty and my mind empty. the little (horse) girl in me has never been so alive, and she has also never gotten her heart broken so bad in the same year. i would skip the november agony of losing my best friend of 15 years, the cat that had been by my side since i was that little girl. i would do anything to spend one more warm afternoon in the grass with him, and anything past that to forget how empty my home feels without his presence. i learned that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. more than the specific details of my life, i am celebrating how lucky i am to participate in creating the existence i want for myself.

i learned that nothing is stopping me but myself, from morphing into the person i would like to be. there is a certain perception i have, that we all do, of the adult versions of ourselves. as i get older, i realize the only one who can help me become this future idea of myself is the present version. with the realization of this power comes the remembrance that nobody can decide what is right for me, what is written for me, and what will become of me, but god. the balance of both concepts will (theoretically but probably not always) breed great discipline and faith.

i am entering a year in which i will dedicate myself to the future, but never forget to enjoy the present. i tend to get stuck in one or the other for some time. i never want to miss a moment where i can drive with my windows down and life is perfect for the duration of that one song. i also never want to miss an opportunity that might make me feel fulfilled in my being on earth. i had previously always been scared of being busy, like responsibilities and jobs and school were always sucking the ability to enjoy life from me. i felt constricted by my schedule (i still do), but it is a sign of this present version of myself doing the work that the future version will reap the benefits of. i have to remind myself that it is a beautiful thing to be busy building the life i want to live. even if i am not always exactly where i want to be in life, doing exactly what i want to be doing, i have learned to trust that this is where i am supposed to be and that i am on the road to the latter. when i am overwhelmed with worldly obligations (which tends to be a relentless feeling), i remember how insignificant i am in the grand scheme of things. it has been liberating to conclude that it's (usually) just never that serious! i tell myself that there is always time: time to drink your morning coffee on the balcony, time to read a book before bed, to visit your family once a week, to take the paddleboards out on a sunny evening, to have lunch with your best friends, to watch movies, to go on dates, to shop at the farmer’s market, to learn a new hobby. At 23, i discovered there is always time if you make time. i am learning how to make time for the things and the people that i love.

it just turned midnight, as i am writing this. my birthday has passed, and i am officially 24. i can’t wait to keep learning and growing and living this bittersweet life.

one of my biggest accomplishments this year for myself was creating this substack account. i am genuinely so grateful for everyone here and i promise to keep writing. special shoutout to my husband, my friends, and my family for standing by me the last year of my life. thank you from the bottom of my heart :)

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lonely creeps up like a rumor. 
whispers behind open palms, 
table for two
but it's just you. 

lonely is a secret kept
between yourself and the robin
that visits the oak in your window. 

one day you'll look to your side, 
at the passenger seat, 
and laugh a manic laugh
because it's finally empty.

what freedom it is to be truly alone
now that lonely does not come 
everywhere with you.

this poem is a message to the feeling of loneliness in a crowded room.

there will be a day when lonely retires its painful job of teaching you how to find beauty in your own company. there will be a day when lonely departs, and solitude becomes bliss.

reading a book on a park bench, dancing to your own music in the kitchen, people watching at a cafe booth; the feeling is nothing short of freedom.