Rooted

My mother used to plant the loveliest perennials in the middle of spring, and all summer they would blossom and bloom and fill our yard with vibrant beauty unlike any other. Come winter, they’d be crushed and buried by the weight of the white. But every April, I’d watch out of my window as the reds and pinks effortlessly painted the garden again with the same old seed. I don’t know if we’ll be like those flowers that come back to life as the seasons change, even after being nothing at all for months and months. I don’t know what kind of weather will be the one that stunts what we’ve grown into or if we’ll be rooted enough to break the soil again later down the road. But I do know this: things do not need to be permanent to be real, do not need to be visible to hold hope, and do not need to last forever to be beautiful.

September

The cicada’s call in the day and the rain’s fall in the night— I wind down and settle into acceptance. The buzz of Summer fades as I squeeze every last drop of its carefree, like chlorine in my hair. The sun could never burn my melanin. My skin is thick. But sometimes things get stuck under it. Sometimes, I just want to crawl out of it. Outside, patience awaits me. And as for my home— it will be stripped to its core until I can retreat to warmth again. To be bare— be one with the trees, and Fall.

Rest In Peace

To love greater than being insecure—-
to skinny dipping, alopecia or curly hair, Allah.
The list is endless today. I couldn’t fly in my dreams
because I was laying in my bed.
My best friend’s snort laughs from the night before
have echoed into tortuous cries this morning,
and I purge with her as if fears are foreign to our bodies.
I say, “Release. You will never run out.”
Love is the last thing to ration.
But I tire easily in Sukhasana,
shaking to the gamble of her possible
posthumous birth and also my second cup of coffee.
There is hope that my mom’s abdominal CT scans are interpreted
as just fat,
and this book’s trope of “in another lifetime”
makes me fall to my knees to pray for
and write an ode to:
submission, the sun’s sanctuary, my shrine,
your gone brother, her father, and both of mine,
a white picket fence overseas built like child’s play
around light pink bricks on a backdrop of olive trees,
more lists, blind trust, and Schrödinger’s cat;
because are we alive if we aren’t loved?

Goosebumps

I can’t see it and I can feel it:
wind and love.
I let it come, I let it be, I let it go.
It feels right to let it move me.
The leaves all run far from the trees
and the hairs on my legs,
they rise when you text.

Women

Happy international women's day
to the nurturing women who raise men
to the ambitious women who get their dollars in the face of unequal pay,
to the sexually liberated women who [redacted] in a shame-based culture,
to the alpha women who have to be louder than men to kill off soft-spoken stereotypes,
to the W.O.C. who live in the gray areas, between black & white,
to single women who bear children,
to women held captive somewhere or to someone,
to women who are still girls,
and to the women who are becoming.

The Somber Sun

The sun leaves me by my lonely
way too early now,
and my mornings start too late.
There’s something a little anxiety-provoking
in abandoning the comfort of my warm blankets
and stepping out into a world so cold.
I feel as though I am running out of time,
while simultaneously wasting it.
So I chase the sun as the darkness chases me,
rushing to get home before 6pm.
And within minutes,
I can’t tell if its still midday or if its midnight;
it all looks the same.
The stillness of the cold awakens something inside of me,
something so set in a sea of disturbances,
and I remain fixated on anything but the peace it portrays.
My therapist used to call it “seasonal depression,”
but I don’t like to call it anything.
The time constraints make it sound too exclusive,
regardless of how temporary the weather can be
and how permanent depression may seem.
And although the clock has been set back,
my hour isn’t spent any different now than before.
Besides, the cyclical nature of time is only inevitable.
And so,
I feel it creeping in again at sunset—
this tendency to find refuge in numbness.
In the midst of it all, I try to remind myself
of the birds that still sing as they migrate south,
even though their trajectories have been flipped
and that I am not who once was.
I cannot allow the wind to sway me back
into wearing a sweater I outgrew.
“Seasons change,”
as do I.

Big cities, little grammar

I love to travel because a part of me loves
discovering different energies in different spaces,
sometimes only to learn about the lack thereof.
as someone who’s been everywhere [cue Johnny Cash],
let me tell you a little something:
colonies and cultures
religions and cults,
they all start from somewhere.
one person and another,
collectively growing in consciousness.
and despite our differences
the unity of grouping results in the same medium of expression.
and it’s art.

there’s art in the body you’re in, and there’s art in another continent.
because we all have music, and we’re made to hear
it's just the metaphysical sense of energies vibrating in various frequencies in certain altitudes of the world to create a tune
for its geographical region or its religious followers
it's the way musicians and politicians are made.

it’s as close yet as distant,
as how much different
you spend your 24 hours
from someone across the world from you
and from your own roommate.

This Isn’t About Hair

Treat your hair like a plant; it grows from the roots.
So water it, according to its own defaults.
Let it do what it wants.
And love it, anyway,
especially when you’re in the process of nurturing it.
That’s how it grows.