i’m grieving for the future without papa. i’m grieving for the family i once thought would last forever. but who am i to hold on to things so tightly, when nothing in this dunya truly belongs to me? it’s been one year since papa passed away. is it a big deal? is it something worth taking a day off from work for? is it something worth lying in bed all day and crying over? i don’t think i deserve that. because life isn’t how i imagined it to be. life doesn’t wait for me to be ready life goes on. but i cried. i cried when i started reciting يٰسۤۚ  and couldn’t continue for minutes. i couldn’t keep up with the rest of my family and ended up falling behind ten verses or more. i couldn’t bring myself to recite out loud, without the tears catching in my throat. i’m grieving because dua is now the only way i can talk to papa. i miss his voice, his laugh, his presence. i miss his excited tone whenever he started telling us stories about “the old days.” i miss his voice calling me to bring ...

I don’t ache the way others do when they long for their childhood. I don’t get why people use their baby photos as profile pictures. "heal your inner child or whatever that means" What even is the inner child? I’ve never been able to relate to or understand these quotes. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember much of the kid I used to be. For me, childhood is more echo than memory distant, hollow, and just out of reach. I never really thought about it. I figured everyone felt pretty much the same. Like, what is the best thing you can even remember from your childhood, anyway? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been focused on what’s ahead. I always wanted to be a grown-up. I thought being an adult meant having control and I craved that more than anything. ( Spoiler: now I dont even want to decide what to eat for dinner. I just ask my sister to pick something anything for me. ) I used to obsess over planning my entire life. Wishlists, timelines, color-coded to-do lists. I thoug...

If I had the chance to live three times…… The first time, we’re innocent finding each other in a messy world. It would be me and you against everything, hand in hand, heart wide open. No fear, no holding back. As if nothing else ever mattered. We’d love each other’s company. People would start asking, “Don’t you two ever get bored of each other?” and we’d just laugh, because that never made sense to us. We’d spend the little things side by side me with my novel, you with your comics. Me with my camera, you with your recorder. I’d write, and you’d recite. I’d make breakfast, and you’d make the coffee. Even silence would become our favorite way to spend the afternoon at the beach. The second time, we’d find each other in the middle of all the noise, as if we had been looking all our lives and somehow, still, it would feel like the very first time. We’d fall in love deeply, all over again. Only now, with even more knowing. We’d be that couple the ones people write songs about, the ones e...