No Happy Ending

I want flowers and a special lunch.

Instead, there is distance and the plane tickets we cannot afford. How did we get so far?

I'm not sure when this happened. But surely much longer than last year. Yeah, sure, it started some time between your conception and your teenage years.

They said I was the missus. Next in line matriarch successor. When I was really just a scared nineteen who did not know what to do with her life or how to care for herself.

Much less for a special one. A tiny human entrusted to my life. Shoes too big for me. 

Nonetheless I would climb again each one of those jungle gyms for you. I would get you finger paint, ice-cream and songs in every time line. My heart was in the right place. You are, were, have always been, will always be my truest love. My daughter.

I feel this emptiness where my heart used to be. And then the haunting question presents itself again:

How did we get this far? And still no answer because perhaps it's not just one thing but a cluster of factors, occurrences, circumstances that drove us apart, yet I still feel connected like my life can't be complete without you because you are part of who I am:

I am your mother.

And the cake looks smooth on the outside. But who knows what is inside. 

I am your mother.

And I am now aware that I am less of a mother than you needed and I am sorry.

And I would romanticize the existence and sometimes wish for my own Mandela effect that changed your memories to all happy, wholesome ones because I love you and now I know what I could have done better but who knows if it would have really helped because this life is so tragic and we were held under the shadow and instead of me it was you who pulled me out and, who am I to manage your life story, to edit your memories? But remember me fondly, please, if you remember me at all.

Cherry pick the happy memories like quick kisses, like when I'd drop you by the gate for eight grade and you'd muster a hurried "bye". Imagine that it is just the morning that we will be apart. I will imagine you as the toddler you were once in my arms.

Daughter.

My daughter.

Love you more than I managed to love you.

This is no happy ending. No happy and no ending for now.

Crack in the world

 I  don't want to take a side

There is no safe side in the storm 

I was not brought up here to fight, but 

I will protect my heart and soul 

Can't believe where we are at right now 

Where did we go wrong?

And how can we turn back?

Or just keep walking till we find a new world

Perhaps build one with our own hands.

This is our true love. 

I will never desert you

But know that we are one

With the stream and the sun

And the moon and the stars 

With my hands that make the bread 

and your strong back to plow the land.

As vast as the horizon 

Just one planet to share 

There are no sides to take 

This is our true love

And we are one.

Cloudia

 Things are happening, but I wished they unhappened

I am a crystal in the sand but I wished I was a cloud in the sky

Cloudia would be my name and I would not have to rain.

Chocolate ain’t make me happy no more, I need something else

No seasons, no sense. Just good pressure and good atmosphere 

I would be humid, high, and unstable… but hey, at least I would be white!

Oh, were I a cloud in the sky!

Couldia would be my name.

26-1-26

White trees glisten in the sun

Behold their beauty!

Never mind they’re deadly 

Their branches tired of carrying all the weight 

Oh what men can’t carry on their backs.

Bent, but not down.

Congratulations, dear tree, on surviving

The prize is: diamonds on your crown.

Winter storm

 A winter storm has come and now it hurts to look out the window. 

But no more than the hurt of not holding my daughter.

Old smiles that wrap me up like memories fading away.

Ever since the summer we came to abhor ice. And now ice sneaks at night bursting out pipes creating chaos and wet feet everywhere they are not supposed to be. 

Everything freezes, stores bread-less and milk-less. People hopeless. I, daughterless.

Hostile cold. A deceitfully beautiful white shroud covers the land.

Snowflakes falling like sand grains in an hourglass except the hourglass is the desert and this snow never melts. Can’t help but wonder what’s the point in all of that.

One snow fluff after another, I lose track amidst a reguetón track, as senseless as this bleak and grim time (oh, we are so far away from the sun) but the music is jolly, so I will dance to it just so I do not quit life. That message that you heard was a provocation (you should make your own mind).

And all the salt circles outside my dwelling can’t help prevent me from slipping on the frozen ground and break my back nor protect me from the evil that lurks out tonight.

A winter storm has come and knocked the power off and now it is cold inside.

Occhiolism

 In a nutshell I was born and here I am.

I took all the punches still standing,

burrowed in the glory of the mountain and the desert that I call home. 

There is so much beauty around, you don’t have to look at me.

I will be gone with the clouds to higher lands. 

Still looking for truths that I may never find.

Learning about the world teachings that break my heart.

I shout at the sky, but no one hears. Forgive me if I am green eyed: she was betrayed by God’s love because she trusted you. Tell me, how could I?

You said it was fine. I am seeing it is not. 

But no one cares because there is nothing to care about: 

My story is but a grain in the hourglass of the history of the world. 

This planet is so wild and vast, there is so much beauty around.

Help me see 

so I don’t have to look at me.

Let’s keep loving while it lasts.

Rayhana

And if I could 

I would keep a couple of stars random 

and have you see from inside my eyes.

I would have you taste the flavor of where I am from 

and you would love it as much as I.

I’d let you know what it is like to wake up everyday with you claiming that my sun on the wrong side

with layers and layers of what you call “not mine”

for one day they tricked you into believing that it is all yours, but tell me, 

who is the master of the sun?

I only wandered too far.

I only wanted to find home.

I have got good legs to walk.

I have got good hands to work.

I know your language and I know mine,

I am tired of hearing that I don’t belong.

And how am I going to love myself 

When all those stares are telling me that my identity is wrong?