I saw you in a dream today. It was so unexpected. I think I am more shocked right now because I just now remembered it. It’s 12:33 PM as I write this sentence.
It was very real, ______. It was so real it’s a shocking REALISATION now that it was only a dream.
Dreams complete me because you don’t.
Dreams comfort me because you don’t.
It’s not a big deal. Of course it’s not a big deal. Damn me if I ever return to a non-returnee.
Looking out of my department’s window
University has been one of my favorite experiences. Both studying there and teaching there. It has a special place in my heart.
We friends loved the landscape there. Before I got admission, I remember my cousin telling me on the phone that there was nothing “stunning” about UOK but that the nature of that place, the walls and the jungle, will get to the poet in me. That there was no perfect infrastructure but there was something I would be able to relate to, and I did fall in love with it so her words were cent percent true.
I remember writing in the weirdest spaces, solitary and among crowds. Exploring trees, languages, verses, people, art and spirituality.
Without trying, I also return to thinking about a specific room in the university and a specific person who has impacted me in a way – I guess I just cherish it all but wish I could do more.
A lot of things happened in those years. Things I wish I could pull down from my memory and put in words, like how Dumbledore caught a streak in his wand and placed in the Pensieve. Alas, such memories are so elusive. But also, I am not even trying yet. They are where they are.
And that’s how I deal with memories. Revisiting, but not entirely.
I saw you in a dream. Again. How many times I think about taking your name but dust it off, it’s not possible. It’s not good. It’s not useful either.
I saw you in a dream again and it was so real. Like our two separate lives. Manind e Khushfehmi. I ask him “haal e shuma chitoray” and he takes his time. I imagine him opening a new tab. He searches for it and replies: “theek Alhamdulillah.”
I am already 4 languages down but it doesn’t create a mess in me anymore. The loudest is the language of art only. And some day I will tell you it was the soul’s.
I read this again today. Because of course, it’s the day. Three years to Taye Abba. Just three!!! It feels like forever. I am feeling a mix of things right now esp. because of going through that old one.
I got featured on TV for something recently so Tayi ammi called me to congratulate about that. She said your taye abba would have been so proud of you. Like he always was. And in that moment I said thank you, tayi ammi, it feels special to me that you would say that.
It’s like everyone in the khaandaan finds moments to think and talk of him randomly. He is still very much there in that sense but DEATH does this THING. Death tears everything apart and it’s not true. Nothing after it is true so there’s that.
Anyway, another Ramadan is here. I don’t even have anything else to add right now.
I close my eyes and consciously direct my mind to rest. Settle, nerves. Breathe. It’s okay. And while they are closed, I let them see just black. Black that is absence but black that is peaceful right now. Breathe. There’s nothing to worry about, you know that. You are used to this.
The air is actually fresh and not bitter. There’s no weight on my chest, or maybe just a bit. Isn’t it funny how you have started to visualise him when he’s not actually here? Is it? However, this is just a phase and phases change. Like people change and well, they don’t come back like that. You will learn it with time. It’s been a lot but just some more.
Sigh.
Open now.
“You—you stayed?”
She held his little shirt in her hands for hours. Sometimes she would put it to her eyes, as if its warmth could soothe those burning coals. Then she would rub it across her face, inhaling its scent again and again, even though it was now stale red: of dried blood. Most of the time she would just hug it, in grave silence or passionate tears, so she could maybe feel him there. And only if she could feel him again, hold his body, swear to God she would never leave! —God knows this. But he still called him up.
You see those two people standing in the room? One a figure so delicate it looks almost breakable, her sight stretched to faraway lands as she gazes from the frosty window; beyond past, present, or to-be. The other stands by the foot of their bed and stares plaintively at the floor, or sometimes at the creased cover-sheets on the bed which they both use. His hand is in his hair.
These two people—I don’t call them a couple. I call them apologies.
You will see now that the man will walk to the window, slowly, and stop a foot away from her. Then he will put his hand on her shoulder. She will turn back immediately, but not too quickly, and they will both just stand there for a moment until she realizes that he is smiling–that his smile contains every bit of sorrow there is in the world–and then she’ll smile too. Hers will be weaker, like something one would give after accepting the uncaring atrocity of life every day, but neither of them would care.
This will be done casually every other day.
You will find that the space of nothing between them has sucked air so much that in order to breathe, you will have to struggle. You will notice that it doesn’t affect them.
You will find that their eyes are empty but their hearts aren’t. They sympathize sometimes, like they did a while ago, and silently assure one another that it is not and will not be okay, but they will see to it until the end. They won’t complain nor hate. Sometimes he would kiss her lightly on the cheek and she would smile. (A year ago she would’ve had spent hours in the bathroom scrubbing, scratching away the kiss and crying. But this doesn’t happen now.)
You will see that it’s not regret that has settled in as a mountain between them. It’s not a grudge that has separated their ways like a sea in between. It’s not the absence of effort. It’s not that. But it still is.
That is the future I see of ourselves. Pardon me for saying so but it’s true.
Hullo, butterfly!
I see you have planned to fly, and that too to no ordinary place but Cigám! But are you sure you want to do that? I mean, yes it looks green and pretty but you see, all which shines is not grass.
You want to leave behind your family, your own red flower and friends, but have you even considered the consequences of this journey? What if something damages your wings? What if it’s a journey towards doom?
Okay, I understand you obviously don’t care and would happily sacrifice a hundred more lives instead– or wings– had you been blessed with ’em (which is honestly unrealistic and highly sentimental a statement). But what you don’t see is how nobody ever comes out of there once they get in! Monsters live there, my fly! Maaunsters.
So, erm, are you sure you want to take this huge lil’ step? [n]
I tried looking for you.
I won’t say I traveled far and wide or climbed those hills and things. No, but I met people and studied them to study you. I stopped to look at your personal things, and I tried sketching out your details.I wanted you back.
But I guess I am tired now.
And I guess I no longer understand you.
You are too grand, too far, too complex. I am too vain.
Randomly Abstract 