my heart at nanna's

‘do you know what it means to forgive, my child, it is when the love; that leftover scrambled love you have inside of your heart for someone, that very love that goes nowhere, buried within deep scars of the past, that very love, no longer pulls you down in painful bitterness, no longer wounds you in hopelessness, but rather, channels itself in urges to grant wishes and prayers of wellness for that person. 

i know it is difficult to accept the lost potentiality of love. i know how hard it is to struggle with the heavy need to let go of it, but you see.. 

not all love is meant to blossom into a life story. 

when love draws two people together, growth is inevitable, some grow together, while others grow apart. people change in the course of time, not all change is agreeable, and that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing, it just means the chapter has come to an end. 

wish them well. 

release their memory of the disappointment you unfairly placed upon it. remember my darling.. 

people can only meet you as far as they've met themselves. 

you can not demand change out of someone. nothing that is forced will ever remain, not genuinely, my child. remember, you young people claim to love and know love, but as soon as you find this “one”, you turn into enemies, how is that? how can love become a battlefield? that is not love. that is attachment to an idea of how love should be. that is what happens when you believe you have found “the one” that fits that idea of how you want your love to be. you fall into a terrible abyss. because, you see, you keep growing, and your idea of love changes, and their idea of love changes as well, now you are two strangers unfamiliar with each other, how does that happen? 

you are both salves to your minds, my child. 

in-love with the idea of love. love isn’t an idea. love is a practice. love is giving and sharing. not demanding, not expecting the meeting of those demands. i will tell you something, i know your heart is hurting right now, i know you are struggling to let go, but it is not the love that you are mourning, it is the effort you believe you have wasted. that is where your grief resides underneath all of that anger and resentment. you see, you are being selfish. thinking only of yourself. you’re saying: i did this, i did that, and i was met with nothing in return. maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. that’s beside the point. 

it could be your love that saved someone’s life. it could be your love that mirrored a person into a new path of self-discovery. it could be because of your love that someone can learn to love themselves into transformation. you will never know. and you shouldn’t because it’s not your part to play anymore. 

do no poison your heart with entitlement, my child. 

remember what i told you: love should free your lover, not keep them confined in cages. the moment you feel your love is imprisoning them, the moment you feel their love is enslaving you, know that that is not love, and you should let go for your sake and theirs. 

no one that has loved genuinely, can ever hate. 

even if they’ve misused your love, like you keep saying. even then. especially then, it’s when you wish them well. because remember, nobody ever regrets having loved fully. nobody ever forgets being loved fully. 

it could be the memory of your love that shields them to believe in a joy longing to embrace them again. it could be the memory of your love that pushes them to find themselves over and over again. and you should hold tight to the memory of their love, it should be your guiding hand to always remember to dig deeper, to plant the seed there, water and nurture compassion in your heart; for yourself and others, no matter the lingering ache, the drought and the suffering you feel inside. 

you are going to be okay, my child. 

a heart that loves will always know how and when to forgive, 

and

welcome back tenderness after such a long absence.' 

never love, but warfare

the road of recovery intertwines indefinitely. with every pursue of promised closure. within the depth of being. lies the child and the trauma. the intricate verbalizing of one’s love language is learned there. to study a person’s nature happens when the tangling isn’t so severe. for the mind to take-on the examining narrative, completely, without the heart’s stubborn interference.

direct the flashlight onto the journey thus far. for every assault; innocence struggles-in-wrestling. to be sought after. regained. through healing the unfortunate sacrifices of one’s own. 

narcissism is a notorious evil. completely devoid of the good-in-human. it exists to shrink a spirit in drain. to dismantle it. to rob it of the breath of energy. with awful beat-downs fueled by self-righteous fury and hatred exercised in punishments to uphold power and control. to love a narcissist. is to condemn oneself to witness the purity of love chocked in bitter tears. with the diminishing of self. the deserting of self. the molestation of self within a violent torrent of abuse. a slow feasting. slobbering over one’s worth and esteem. 

there is no love large enough. delicate enough. embracing enough. to chase away the cunning ways. 

the erasure of reality as i knew it. defenseless. i stood to my own truth. blinded to my frame of reference. charged and convicted with a monstrous verdict, without a trial. i was made to believe wrongness was deeply rooted inside of me. i suffered through years apologizing for the way i am. the way i am that deserved the terrible neglect, disrespect, unjust treatment and insults. how throbbing is the evil of a person to instill and force a lack of belief in the other. to assassinate the conviction of the other, of their innate goodness. and gifted humanity. to consume the heart of the other with cruel intimidation. threatening every genuine address of needs. shamelessly. through a shouting misdirection. selfishly distancing then disappearing whevener pleased. 

suffocated under the weight of his placed guilt. the narcissist pressed me against a vicious abandonment to deal with a miscarriage of love. claiming it a result of my own faults of nature. with difficulty every time. i would rise to wipe away the mess. of a festering, faithless pride. 

for all the unnatural evil seated in his true colors. the indecent ugliness concealed in thinly worn pretends. cries of oppression never, ever fade untraced. and i feel God’s wrath has already taken place. with the gradual toiling of a soul, rotten in loathing. forgotten in gruesome decay. i pray for it. i do pray for it. in spite of the sourness. and perhaps precisely because of it that i pray it is not too late. may death never catch him unguarded. may He heal and save him of himself. in a final act of accepted repentance and pardon. 

in every appeal, i pray for Him to knock and shatter this mountain of ache pushed against my heart. God loves the kind. and i pray for kindness to move me. pondering meanings. lessons. gathering pieces to love myself again. God loves the kind. and i pray for my spirit to never cease calling after the Light. God loves the kind. and i pray that every dread-filled memory perish at the hand of time. for consolation to fall readily at my lap. God loves the kind. and i pray He loves me. for the affection watered in-waste. the patience. the endurance. the silence to the smearing lies. i pray He never hold my anger. my sorrow. against me. may He forgive me for the dwelling of a lifetime in hell. i pray He loves me for removing myself out of harm’s way. far away from somebody’s remorseless habits of pushing me to the edge every single day. i pray He loves me. for ending a painful love, of abuse. God loves the kind. and i plea for a generosity of kindness. to recognize and always carry me, closer to You my Light. pleading for protection and mercy. always. from ever encountering an evil like that. 

ever again. 

اللهم لا تسلط على من لا يخافك فى و لا يرحمنى

اللهم لا تسلط على من لا يخافك فى و لا يرحمنى

Lifetime

sharp-toothed difficulty. 

an unconfined season of misery befalls, uncovering silent aches.

prayer sits to witness the painful shifts, without a quest for remedy. 

oh my light. 

how tiring. 

all walking is tiring however the need to reach you. 

forgive me. this heart is brutal with impatience to endure even more;

crashing & crushing waves of a brief hope. 

release me. 

my light. 

release me to an inevitable opening; a relief of the no longer. 

my light; an evening prayer

the collapse of language within the sealing of time, reveals a promised delicacy of prayer. all humbled spirits rests upon a stillness; a soaked solitude covered in an assuring quietness, washed over tenderly with cries for forgiveness. my Light. grant me the sincerity of such blessed closeness. to come undone a wretched servitude of an image. accept me in welcome. in peace. pleading. always yearning. never to be abandoned to the howling hunger of the vicious nights. my Home. i fear the deepening of shadows, the inability to keep alive a child’s joy you entrusted my heart with; the joy i deny myself, bitterly, with the burying of sorrows. do not neglect me to a distressed discipline of a frantic self. preserve me. my Lord. preserve me, as i lay in tranquility, soothed to the sound of a certain truth.

فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا  

إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا 

The Final Reading

feverish hours enveloping the nights in the driest of consumption. faith appears, not as a matter of question, but consolation to a life stranded in an indifferent condition.

in the final reading, i am but a tumbling shadow, crumbling flat at the only familiar it knows; a persisting loneliness, unbuttoned, down to a bruise. 

let Him know that i have overgrown an insufficiency & distance; too difficult & far-off all concepts of home. 

had the earth refused the covering of rain, no one would realize that it takes only water to smooth these hard edges. 

but what if the drought is stretched in dullness, destined to tightly enwrap a swollen soul inside a liquid darkness; much, much thicker than to contain.. what then? 

the warmth of intimacy

i believe in the sacredness of love when he holds me. 

unveiled, by his gaze. in each moment, he fills me with the beauty of God’s promise of finding togetherness resting within a special heaven on earth. 

these thoughts seek him; the way a lonesome traveler flees for oasis at the noble night. honesty lights my path, his is the courage of always speaking one’s mind, he reads mine like stilled temperature. 

splendidly laid with complete contemplation; proudly, i recognize the reflection of what i am yet to become, & surely capable of being. my heart sings the tunes of blues with the wake of mornings. 

my oh my.

curled gently at an embrace. this is the work of prayer. finally. the coming to manifest. my bath of sunshine pouring over a fatigued lump of loneliness. clothed with the warmth of intimacy, a rushing flood of desire awakens my soul, to feed a deep longing for him. 

Difficult Heart

‘No one is going to devote their lives for you..’ she said as she approached me slowly ‘and even if you could find someone who is willing, you would run away the minute they expressed it to you. I know you more than you would like to believe, and honey, you are not looking for love, you are looking for yourself in every arm that ever held you. It doesn’t work like that, it never worked like that, no one has the pieces to complete you.‘ 

Reaching for my hands, she looked at me through a glass of helplessness, I hated that expression on her face, I hated the pain it painted and the guilt lurking in the room, way, way after she’s gone. 

‘I am sorry..’ hesitation cautiously stopped her in her track, for a moment I wanted to embrace her, no, I wanted to be a part of her, not a whole, never a whole, only a distinct memory in a distant space inside of her mind. 

My eyes began to water, and she sat closer to rest her head on my shoulders ‘baby, you can’t keep doing this, you can’t keep on bathing your flesh in sorrow, with the hope you will be born anew. There is no sacrifice left for you to hand, there is no malicious way to feed this void that you haven’t tried already. You need to give up this unfair torture against yourself’ 

‘Easier said..’ I whispered as my tears betrayed me. 

She looked at me, this time, her lips quivered and I knew she wanted to talk a whole lot more; talk about our happy childhood, how she remembers it, talk about the days I was everyone’s long awaited joy, and the smiles that always welcomed me, talk about the dreams of our parents, and how our father always deemed me special for carrying a sensitivity way beyond my age. She had endless stories of a time I no longer return to; filled with memories I can no longer obtain on my own.  

‘You got to learn to fight it.. this.. darkness.. you got to..’ she broke off crying. I embraced her, for once, I was the one doing the comforting, for once I held her like fragility and prayed -for the first time- to God, prayed that He heals my sister; heal her of the burden of having to heal me, heal her of the responsibility that she believes is hers, I couldn’t stand to see her suffering, and worst, I couldn’t stand being the reason behind her suffering. 

‘You should go’ I spoke after a few moments of silence ‘I will be fine, like you said, it’s just one of those days’ like an automatic switch, she raised her head after those magic words were uttered, I learned with my family, the only way to release them is through isolation, I couldn’t expect them to understand, nor should I expect to receive their attention. We are all hopelessly, frantically running, lost in this maze and everyone has their own issues to deal with. I learned to keep quiet about mine, at first it was through shame but as I grew older, it was for survival, when no one knows a thing, or how brutally a pain can thickens, I should be fine, I can carry it, untouched, until the passing of days. 

‘You know how much I love you’ it wasn’t a question but a fearful gesture of affirmation, she wanted me to know that she knows how her efforts had turned in vain, yet again, and how she’s always left with the only absolute she can offer; her love, like a shadow always longing after me, left but an open wound, yet again, waiting to be washed off me. 

‘I know’ was the only response I could give, as I let her go and stood behind the locked door, stealing glances through the peep hole as her figure drifted away, I stood there, diseased at a standstill, wondering if this is the last memory I’ll have of her.. Walking away, like everyone did, with a heavy love they had to put down.