visions

My body has disintegrated
I am level, finally
with the ground

my mouth is still
but my thoughts travel
from one end of the world
where I circled in worship
and back

here, where I used to live
in a quiet apartment with
others.

these are the words that I remember
reciting

and not reciting.

my fingers feel hot, sweaty.
But I cannot raise them to wipe
my forehead.

Dead leaves lie over my
face, just inches above.

If you're crying to me,
For me.
I cannot hear you.

But I hear their questions asked. Clearly.
violently.
The answers demanded from me
are so simple

and yet
they escape me, my mouth is still.
For all my studies, I do not know them.

The sky opens, I see my place in Jannah
disappear.
I see my place in Jahanam, built for
no other but me.

And I see you.
You who stood between me and my jannah
only because I let you.

My hands.
My hands are sweaty.

Grip

I am angry.

Your words from the past are ingrained in my mind, they won't let me alone to proceed on my journey. Like anchors, they pull me the only way they know how - down. I can't climb until I shed this weight from my shoulders. And it took me years to realize that flashes of happier times are simply glimpses into the mind of deceit.

I've searched it over, but don't find it in myself to forgive you for the days you sinned, for the minutes you let slip by when prayer was called. I can't forgive you for the words not memorized and the actions not taken. For lying to me.

I have words for you. For my sinning self: I will smite you with all the strength left in my body, even if it means death. Resistance is futile.

Not that important

I'm not.

But I keep waiting for someone to tell me that I am.

today

These two eyes will speak Today.

The memory of your face brought back
in front of me, like flesh. And how
sorry I will be to have once looked
you in the eye
and lied.

How can I turn away from that Day
when my eyes must speak the truth
while my mouth
is sealed?

The little I have known to control-
how sorry my eyes will be when they burn.

Sun

I hate that words are never enough.

I guess that there must be something more than those little bits in soup and cereal that I haven't been able to grasp yet, or to compile - to construct in my mind or on a page.

Friendships seem to be trivial, surreal, everything peripheral and outside of this. This chair that I'm sitting in, this body I inhabit temporarily. For these past years I've been mindfully, carefully, fully twisted into believing that truth was in everything, and in all words that were attached to smiles. My friends, my loved ones, the people I care for the most. Who are they, really?

It is not that the truth was muddled, but just that I was, am, more blind than I would imagine a person without the sun would be. I guess fatigue makes the lens clearer.

It'll be a while before this clears up. It'll be some days yet, some hours and moments of brief reflection. Some collisions, some bad days and some days where I can't look anyone in the eye, even myself. But it will clear, it will. InshaAllah.

Oh how I am wary of my next steps.

Looking

Fatigue fills my lungs,
I'm tired of breath
and walking and stretching my mouth.
I can't find my papers that I've strewn
about my room. I can't find myself.

I can't even find haphazardness.

I want someone to see me,
not just my eyes when I look at him.

stretch me

I wash my face and past three times over - and I try over. Water drips off of my face and onto the small carpet next to the sink. I see emptiness in the mirror looking back at me with her cold eyes. I see the world in the mirror, and her same eyes demand answers from me. I turn away.

I have tried to shield myself from your words, but they wound me. I am not enough. These battle grounds cry for peace.

Pause

I cannot write until I tell you
that these are my hands shaking,
the ground is shaking.

I cannot speak until I tell you
that the world seems small -
not my world. The world.
With its corners and its tunnels
and its people. All
their differences.

yet they are still the same.

I cannot sleep until I tell you
that words are held and not
forgotten.

But these are verses soon forgotten

I cannot breathe until I say it
one hand is not enough.