Burning Echoes

I have questions. I keep pushing them away and willing them to hide in rooms too small to hold them, and I try to keep them locked behind bars of mist. But the bindings are too weak to hold weak, and so my questions keep escaping, and they play that game they like that I hate. They repeat themselves like echoes bouncing against the insides of my head, they spread their wordy lines into every space inside of me and they are so demanding that they weaken the structure of every cell they come by.

My questions run so deep they have become a part of who I've become. The longer they stay unanswered the stronger they bruise my moldings. But try as I might I can't find their answers. As good as I am with words, as good as I am at looking, seeing and understanding I can't for the life of me find so much as half an answer. I have looked inside of me and I have looked out and around, but I can't find even the tiniest solid clue that might guide me to where my answers might lie.

I have questions that are burning a hole through my character. They burn so hot and strong it's hard for me to be fine. My strength is wavering and shaking beyond belief, it is cracking under the pressure of so much fire and all I can do is watch helplessly as an echo of flame blackens part after part of who I am. Even the hope that I used to use to lull the questions into sleep has run out. I have no more ideas, weapons or solutions. All I have is eyes that fill with endless tears more times a day than I can count. All I have are long sleepless nights holding my chest as tight as I can against the onslaught of echoes.

My questions are consuming me. They don't understand that there are some answers that can't be found until the time is right. They don't understand that we need to be patient. They don't understand that no matter what they do, no matter what games they play, no matter how many tears they make me shed, no matter how strongly they burn and hurt me they won't find their answers. They don't understand that the reason I haven't been giving them what they want is because right at this moment, what they want doesn't even exist yet.

.. I have questions. And they keep blistering their echoes inside of me. They are stubborn and silly. They belong to that part of me that has been so hurt it regressed into a little child. I have questions that don't care how much they hurt -they keep on screaming why, how and when with every "Lub" of my heart, and they send some of their fire out in tears that run out with every blink of my eyes. 

My Home

Have you ever had a friend that feels like home? If you have one, then you know what I mean. But if you don't, then it might sound odd and make little sense to you. I have one such friend, and my God, I'm a lucky person to call her my home. Let me attempt to explain how it feels, but excuse me if the words come across dry and less laden with feeling than usual. Some feelings run so deep, are so a part of your very DNA that it's nearly impossible to put them to words. They cannot be quantified, described or expressed. Some things are just felt, and they just are.

It's not about love. Love isn't the main ingredient, although it is an important limb. It's about comfort. It's about fitting so perfectly together that all the edges disappear. It's about being so in tune that you can never distinguish which melody belongs to who. Some friendships transcend and become blood. They become like your very skin, something that holds all of you together and yet is still as much a part of you as your mind and heart. 

When you have such a friend, then that friend feels like your home. When your atoms are shaking and uncontrollable, when they are scattered and floating around what is supposed to be your core -being with your homey friend makes all those atoms sit still and finally rest. You feel at peace. You feel right when you've been wrong for a long time. It's like coming back to your house after a long day, putting on your most comfortable clothes and lying down. When that's how it feels to simply be with a friend, then you've found a home in a person, you've found the missing half of your soul, and you are luckier than I can ever say. 

My words were choppy and broken. My sentences were not well strung. My descriptions were clumsy. My writing was not what it always is, but that's the best way I have of describing how this friendship feels. It's so past reality, past words and solids that it can never be captured. But she knows, and I know, and we can feel it. My writing isn't the way it always is, and that's the perfect way for this piece. It is something different, and it just is. 

For my B, my home.. 

I See Stars

Everywhere I look I see stars. They shine bright when I blink and they fade to a low glow when I stare. Wherever I look I find them looking back with knowing light that twinkles with secret things. They are glued to the backs of my lids and they are fixed to my eyes. I find them fallen all around, and I find them soaring high above.

I see stars that tell stories of myself. They hang around waiting for questions that never come. They haunt my sight screaming silent words into the void that is my within. I see them when I sleep and I see them when I wake. I see them when I look and I see them when I try to shield my gaze. They are there dancing within my mind, shaking with words that need an escape. 

I see stars that speak of long dead wishes, of bleeding dreams and broken visions. I see stars that are a mere reflection of light coming off the death of a strong burning flame. I see stars that are nothing but leftover illusions that constantly remind of the dying souls it left behind. I see stars that scream of disappointment and embed the knowledge of fading brightness within every light. 

I know what they would speak and yet they keep haunting my sight. Everywhere I look I see stars. They shine when I blink and they shine when I stare. Everywhere I look I find them looking back with knowing light trying to tell me secret things. They are glued to the backs of my lids waiting for questions that never come. They are fixed to my eyes shaking with stories that need an escape. 

I see stars everywhere I look, and when I finally listen to all their words they tell me secret things that I never knew. I see stars that tell stories of life after what they thought was their death. I see stars that burn brighter than the flame that died to give them life. I see stars that remind that long dead wishes, bleeding dreams and broken visions are nothing but a prelude to brighter lights that bring fire to worlds and skies. I see stars that linger everywhere I look to tell me that the end is the beginning, and the death of fire doesn't mean the light is gone. 

Layers of Person

Don't sit there and tell me that you're a failure. Don't speak those words, don't utter them in my presence or without. Don't ever think them or let them sully your mind and heart, not for a single second, not for half a moment, not for a heartbeat.

Don't look at a graveyard of half finished dreams and use them to judge your worth. Don't look at the ocean of bricks and stones surrounding you and believe the lies they try to tell you. Bricks are what remains of broken buildings but they are also the bits you use to build. If you're surrounded with stone and cement it doesn't mean you're standing in ruins, you could simply be where things have yet to be built.

Stop looking at the materialistic. Stop judging things with a focused mind that only sees what crops it's reaped. Look beyond the field to the lives that you built. Look at me. Look at us, and see the layers of person that you created within us. You might not have given us things from without but by God you gave us pieces that we used to create our within.

You built people. You built us cell for cell, one piece of character at a time and you made us to be worth more than any materialistic things you could have given us. You gave us resilience, you gave us strength of mind and character, you gave us boundless hope and endless ambition, you gave us curiosity, you gave us a love for knowledge that can never be quenched. You gave us us. You made us into the types of human beings that will never fail because they will never stop.

Circumstances can attack at any given moment and take away blocks of what you've gathered in your life, it can take away your gifts and the future you wanted us to have. But you gave us things no one can take from us, not even life itself. You gave us layers of person that we can use to stay upright whenever disaster strikes.

You're not a failure. You raised human beings that stand even as they are falling. You didn't build us lives, you built us into people that will one day build hundreds of lives. You're the biggest success I know, and the best builder and giver the world has ever seen. You might not know it yet, you might not see it, but I swear to you with everything that you built inside of us, we will show you. We will show you how wrong you are.

To the greatest man I know

True Words

Let's speak of the world. Let's speak of water and wind. Let's speak of sun and sand. Let's speak of nature, of God's creations, of beauty.. of anything.

Let's find distractions -things to pin our words to so they don't fall where they always do. Let's cover reality with a thick blanket of nonsense and play a game of hide and never seek. Let's use fake words and look through lying eyes and peer into pretend.

Let's not. Let's instead speak of feelings as they come, and let our words describe what they may. Let's speak of a loss so true and pure that you get lost within it. Let's speak of layers and layers of the same exact feeling spreading shades of the same flavor every moment they exist. Let's speak of that chest tightening lack that robs your heart of anything that isn't confusion.

Let's speak of feeling like you're floating in midair, in utter darkness, without knowing why for neither the present nor the future. Let's speak of the exhaustion of maintaining a semblance of normalcy when your insides are anything but. Let's speak of an endless stream of shadows made of pain and fear and loss that are held in place by nonexistent strands of strength.

Let's speak of an ocean of darkness held at bay by the dim flickers of a dying candle. Let's speak of living in fear of cracking under the immense pressure and falling victim to a world of feelings that constantly searches for a dent in your armor so it can engulf you.

Let's speak of a single limp human soul standing on water, drowning in shadows and carrying the weight of a stormy sky. Let's speak of imagination that speaks real better than reality and of unreal images painting nothing but the truest truth. Let's speak true words in their lying form and let's hope storms, shadows and loss find a way to drain out through them and leave a sliver of emptiness for serenity to find rest. 

Change

I want to take a step back. Or twenty, or perhaps more. I want to take however many steps back it needs for me to see myself and my life clearly. I want to see every messy corner, every broken piece of glass and every pile of ash. I want to see the good and the bad with a clarity that only distance can give.

When I can see everything, when I've developed sight and a mind that can fathom every facet of myself, I want to sit back and make decisions. I want to uproot everything and move it around. I want to reorganize my life, throw things out and put new things in their place. I want change. I want it so badly it is a need and no longer a mere desire.

I need to throw all olds out and bring in a big bunch of new. I want new hopes and new dreams, I want new goals and new plans, I want new ideas and new thoughts. I want a new mind, and a new perspective. I want to want different things and I want to want them differently. I want my surroundings to reflect that need for different -I want everything to be fresh and new.

I want change. I want to go through myself and my life like a tsunami and wash my insides and outsides clean and bare. I want to replant, I want to begin from zero again with nothing but a book of experience guiding me through. I want to change everything through and through, and then sit from afar and bask in the comfort of losing that restlessness that was my old. 

Loss, Faith & Surrender

I don't have any more fancy words in me. I don't have any descriptions, or elegant sentences that tell of how I feel in the most convoluted way I can manage. I have nothing in me but true, honest to god words in their simplest form -words that tell.

I feel lost. The only solid in my life right now is my faith. It is the only tangible protection I have against the madness that is surrounding me, and the only thing keeping me sane and whole. With faith you hold on to Allah, you hold on to him with everything you have and believe in his wisdom, and that your patience will be rewarded. With faith you surrender all thought to Allah, and await those trustworthy actions that make worrying pointless.

I have surrendered. But there are things that must be done on my end. There are fights to be fought, decisions to be made and paths to be taken. There are trials that test my faith and my patience. Life keeps happening to you even if you've surrendered it to Allah. And I don't know how to live it. That is my problem. That is my confusion and my loss.

If it were up to me, I would hide in the littlest corner I could find. I would hide in it with my praying clothes and with my Qura'an and I would spend every minute of my time praying and praying. If it were up to me I would not live, I would just worship, pray and believe. But it is not up to me. It seldom is.

Answers are needed from me. Decisions are expected. Strength is welcomed. Togetherness is required. And they are all things that I am currently running just a little low on. I don't have the wit to find the answers. I don't have the courage to make decisions. I have strength but it is the inward kind that keeps me from breaking, not the outward kind that can hold others' hands. And I have togetherness but it comes in the form of endless praying.

The questions are chipping away at my patience. Questions all around, all the time, from everyone and everywhere. The one person that should have the most questions is me, and I keep those hidden and locked away in a vault labeled "none of my business". I can't answer any questions because I don't have the answers, and I don't want to have them, I don't want to seek them out and I don't want to find them. They are none of my business. They're Allah's, and His alone. That is what surrender means. That is what my faith is.

Alas, I must find answers to give. There are only so many questions you can leave unanswered without tipping people over the edge. My edge might be some distance away, but I have established long ago that I am less than human and my edges seem to always be misplaced. People mistake trust and faith for denial and retreat. But perhaps they are mistaken for each other because they truly look alike.

They need answers, Allah has them but I do not. And so I must once again hunt around inside myself and find some extra patience and strength. Perhaps there is some left on that furthest shelf, or in that corner labeled rainy day. Wherever they are they must be there somewhere, for I need them to brew a potion of answers out of dust. I need them to keep my smile, and to offer up things that I've never had. I need them so I can be for others what my faith is to me -the rope they hold on to when they fall off the edge.