Plundered

The words plundered the nooks of my thoughts: I do. I become. I am. I need. I want. I have. They calcified and set themselves to tiny stones in areas I couldn’t always swim to and reach when my eyes were closed. But I knew they were there, evolving. They are there creating a lakeContinue reading “Plundered”

Egg-Yolk Sunshine State of Mind

It was the still, sticky, egg-yolk afternoons that made her think of mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers. When the sun is her stinkiest, the salt dissipating from her skin and bubbles on the pores of everyone and everything she laid her eyes on, that was when cotton dresses, floral patterns, gold bands and blue stonesContinue reading “Egg-Yolk Sunshine State of Mind”

Like Wood in a Fireplace

A voice smooth and uncoiling singing to Abdulhalim, crackling when it tried to get the high notes. Like wood in a fireplace lit on a silvery blue snowy evening on the only day of the year that the country snowed. Singing waves of crumbling notes, soothing songs of white joyful lies. Songs of motherhood. LikeContinue reading “Like Wood in a Fireplace”

The Best Breadcrumbs

“Tell me about your dreams”, his mother says.  She slices through a cool cucumber that seemed to have lost all its juice. He wants to say that he won’t eat this powdery mildew; that she will one day end up with a fungal disease if she lets her vegetables sit around the bottom drawer allContinue reading “The Best Breadcrumbs”

Opposite Ways

I love you in the way that I do: crazily, daringly, vulnerably, anxiously. I don’t love you in the way that you do: calmly, steadily, carefully, sensibly. I can only love you for who you are, and you can only love me for who I am, if we love each other in the opposite waysContinue reading “Opposite Ways”

Dear Gender

Dear Gender,  Recently, our arguments should have disentangled us from each other’s gripping embrace. We should have, by now, been part of the trend and movement of breaking free from nature’s secret code.  We don’t, however, beat around the bush, nor call ourselves brave by staying outside of our designated homes. We remain inside, blockingContinue reading “Dear Gender”

The Blue Jay and the Red-tailed Hawk

It was rather enchanting, how I died. I was hovering above their heads when they wrote with a blue bic ballpoint pen that it was from natural causes. But I am certain it wasn’t that. We never just die from the cause; other things mark the real ending. And even then, it’s not quiet aContinue reading “The Blue Jay and the Red-tailed Hawk”

Quote

Now if only we knew that knowing is always partnered with not knowing, all would have been better than it has become. Beisan A. Alshafei May 11th, 2019

Made up of Halves, Trapped in a Whole

A Half-Skeptical Take on Things (Two girls, ladies, young adults, perhaps women – who can tell nowadays? – sitting for lunch in a happening restaurant. They are discussing the instagram stories flashing across a phone screen on the center of the table as they eat.) A: “It used to be all about the perfect liquidContinue reading “Made up of Halves, Trapped in a Whole”

The Sunken Forest

August 25th, 2014 – “That Day” / “Today” Fire Island, New York Dear H,  My sentences will be long. If you are in quarantine like I am, only read this letter when you want to plunge into the abyss like we used to, where sentences are made for pure feelings, and where they lack structureContinue reading “The Sunken Forest”