Everyone Who Reblogs This Will Get The Title Of A Book To Read Based On Their Bio/posts.

There is only one victory, and it has someone else's name on it.

~Me

Happy new year to the handful of people who follow me. I hope this year we'll be less depressed.

So peaceful Souvenir. A brother singing ancient Andalusian song in Al-hambra palace.

“Sometimes, a blessing will come your way simply because you wanted it for someone else.”

– Shaykh Muhammad Mutawali al-Sha'rawi

"A House with No Mirrors"

I live in a house. A house with no mirrors.

What am I hiding from, you may wonder. What is it that I don't want to see?

Is it the way my mother's smile quivers when she's been hurt? Or the violent anger my father's fist holds?

Is it them I'm avoiding? Or… is it me?

Do I hate the curve of my nose, the same nose I share with my father? Or is it the hint of my mother's cheekbones, that I can't stand?

Do I despise the oppressor or pity the victim? Do I…. fear them? Fear becoming them? Or do I fear myself?

Which category do I belong to? Which one am i? A perfect blend of the oppressor and the oppressed. Where do I fit in?

In the broken cracks, where the world forgot, or perhaps, chose to forget, about me because it's so much easier to ignore than accept that there's a gaping flaw in the system. Where at some point, I too forgot the feeling of a warm embrace and loving eyes. And with the broken shards of time, I forgot my own name. Just like I hope to forget my own face.

I look in the mirror. Who am I looking at this time? A monster? Or his slave? Whose face do I see more?

Whichever one it is, I know for a fact that it's not my face that I see but theirs.

Always theirs.

I was cursed from birth. I was cursed to carry the DNA of two contradicting forces. They've blended inside me, melded as one just to create a disgusting mess of weaknesses, insecurities and existential issues. I wouldn't know where I began and they ended, what part of me even belongs to myself.

I had the misfortune to live among thieves. They stole my childhood, my sanity and now my face.

Heads turn away refusing to accept that mistakes were made. I guess I inherited that as well.

I hide away.

In moments of despairing sadness, I see my mother's lifeless smile instead of mine and in moments of rage… well. I don't like to look at that.

I wish I could see my mother's curiously intelligent mind. Or my father's sharp, observing gaze. But…

I live in a house with no mirrors because I'm afraid of what I might see this time.

I fade away.

~Me

“(Isn’t memory often about loneliness?)”

— David Bottoms, from “Black Horses,” Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch (Copper Canyon Press, 2018)

If you think about it, all our thoughts and morals and feelings are plagiarized as well. We are a product of what we hear, see, speak and learn. We pick and choose what we like best while the rest goes to deep recesses of our mind.

Someone, a long time ago, wrote the same words as me, albeit in a different format. That doesn't change the fact that we both reached the same conclusions. But the issue is that my thoughts were never uniquely mine. And in all honesty, I'm learning to deal with that.

~Me

I don't feel so good today.

I feel a strange, ancient ache in my soul. An aged feel to my rigid bones that once held the weight of the earth and the sky. Now they wish to rest, to turn to dust. They have endured enough weathering. I feel nostalgic for a life I have never lived, for a life I wish I lived. I suppose I do understand this humane desire. The soul was never meant to stay on the earth. It was meant to rise. And here, now, it is bound to, shackled to this body and inadvertently, to this world,held taut by the unyielding chains of gravity. I yearn for the day I return home. Up there.

I don't feel so good today and that's fine.

~Me