Fantastical

In this new year to come, I hope you are more of who you are always becoming and never just who you are at one moment in time. May you keep orbiting around the sun. May you dwell in meaningfulness and find privilege in deep understanding through all your seasons, like when your clouds cry or your leaves fall. Or when your lakes turn to ice and your soil is covered with snow. And when you melt into the river and flow endlessly until you splash against rocks into a larger body of water.

Forgive me, for in this last year I have been meaning to keep catching you off guard by pointing out that you are not who you were, just when you thought you finally know yourself well. Multiplicity, to me, is beautiful precisely because it feels unstable and somewhat deceitful. I want for your face to have changing features because you are more than one person. Let’s be real. Because you’re like a silent movie with fantastical characters projected on a screen, not just a black and white picture.

I hope that you remain lost somehow, as hollow as remaining lost feels, because you are so wondrous like that. Your smile is loud and your grip on me is tight. You understand exactly what you want when you no longer know if you want it so bad.

So in the coming year, when you can’t put a finger on what it is you want or who it is you are, don’t feel disheartened! Just keep adding up until life’s machine grinds you to a specific thinness and says, “There, you’re good for now!”

Imagine that all your layers have been compressed under pressure to make a pair of eyeglasses prescribed for someone. Someone like me. I see the clearer picture only through you. And as my eyesight keeps getting worse, imagine that must add to yourself another layer. You must keep adjusting so I can keep seeing better.

Forgive me for being selfish when I say you’re perfect so, no longer so. It’s just that to me you are always becoming and you never just are. You are always becoming and you never once were.

_{Beisan A. Alshafei}

_{Written on December 31, 2022}