Poetry

How does a woman know that He is the one?

they asked “do you love her to death?”
i said “speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life”

• -mahmoud darwish

قالو: تموت بها حباً؟
قلت: ألا اذكروها على قبري لتحييني

https://youtu.be/gqGEauWWSYM?si=JZs9RmG2WcY0Yx3K

This nasheed's lyrics are truly poetic.

Tolkien captured my wanderlust perfectly. Weary feet but itchy feet. They need to move. Need to stick a pin in the globe and figure out the whither.

A poem by WB YEATS

If Walls Could Remember
The walls of my room know a version of me the world has never met.
They have watched me smile when my heart was breaking.
They have listened to conversations I could never have with anyone else.
They have witnessed my sujood, my tears, my unanswered questions, and the moments I thought no one could see me.
They have watched my faith rise, my faith weaken, and my Rabb never stop calling me back.
How strange.
We spend so much of our lives trying to be understood by people, while the silent walls around us have carried our story without ever speaking a word.
If they could speak, they would not tell the world how perfect we looked.
They would tell the world how often Allah covered us when we had nothing to hide behind except His mercy.
Perhaps that is why the greatest comfort has never been that no one knows us.
It is that Allah does.
He knows every tear that never reached our cheeks. Every duaa that never left our lips. Every battle we fought in silence.
And despite knowing the parts of us we try to hide,
His door remains open.
Always.

Most days I wish I had never met you ‘cause then maybe I could sleep at night. I didn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there’s someone like you out there.

Our chapter was only three pages, was it?
In those pages, I felt like I won and that there is some loss in that win.
Even my smile made me wonder in pain.
My breath got stuck in restlessness.
And the end of our story made me finally breathe.
I'm left wondering where the fire was in?
Maybe it was just an imagination

Love yourself.

They said things about me that were never true, and somehow I became the one who had to live with them.

Years have passed, but the story remains, a shadow following me through places I never thought it would reach.

I kept waiting for the truth to be spoken.

For someone to say, “No. That's not what happened.”

But no one did.

And perhaps that is what hurts the most.

Not the lie itself, but the silence of those who knew the truth and still let me carry it.

I wonder sometimes how a person can sleep at night knowing they left someone else to bear the weight of their own mistakes.

I was never asking for the world to love me.

I only wanted my name back.

The name I had before people turned someone else's story into my identity.

I am tired of remembering something I never did.

Tired of feeling the ache of a wound that refuses to close because no one ever admitted they caused it.

But perhaps one day I will stop waiting for an apology that may never come.

Perhaps one day I will understand that the truth does not become a lie just because it was buried.

And maybe, after all these years, I can finally put down the weight of a story that was never mine.

They may have left my name in the dirt.

But I know I did not put it there.

And I know I don't have to spend the rest of my life trying to prove it.