To The World, 

I hope this letter reaches you in the best of your health. 

As I am on my last legs, not sure whether you even remember or not but it just crossed my mind that maybe I owe you an apology. I know you are pretty furious at me, I am sorry for the unknown. We were friends earlier, but I don’t know what just happened in a blink of an eye. I don’t know what happened that you starting attacking and bombing parts of me. No, I am not complaining. Not complaining at all. I am just sharing; sharing the ghastly feelings inside me. I am down and out, pal. I am being wiped and smashed daily, every second of every moment. I feel so wrenched and demoralized. I just wish the ground would swallow me up. It hurts. Every inch of me hurts. It is like I am being wounded on the same spot, my heart. At least I deserve a break, no? I was peeking at one on my organs the other day, and you know what? I look so terrible. The paint was peeling off. I was all black. I was grim with dirt. And I had this weird smell of neglect-tion. I really need a shower I guess.

Hey, I know you are furious at me. I know I must have done something terribly wrong. Otherwise why would you hurt your friend and its children? I understand your good intentions. I honestly do. I might sound sugar sweet but I am not kidding man. Not kidding at all. After all we are all your mercy. I just request you to help me out. I miss that humming of bees even the bray of donkeys. The croak of frogs and chirping of sparrows no longer soothes my ear. All I hear is weeping; weeping of my children, and then their children. It is like a chain; a continuous chain of misery. It sucks for me, for I can’t even answer their muted cries. They question me daily. They curse me for being their care taker. I know it is my entire fault. The ripping is my fault. They used to decorate me earlier. They found home on me. They kept me all cheerful. They celebrated events with me. We were one happy place. I was their home. They were my life. And ahh, they made babies in me. And oh, how much I miss the tickles I had when the little ones danced and played on me.

My heart lurches for I don’t know what the future awaits. I know my downfall is evident. Even the sky that covers me up is pewter colored and patched with ominous black clouds. Every day I wake up sobbing, drenched in sweat and in fear. Nights are even more dreading. As those cries run shrilly at night. Fighting back tears of fear, all I do is: Stare motionless at the approaching danger. Infinite parts of me die daily; infinite parts of me still wait being blown. I have this grief held at bay and I certainly refuse to give in to sorrow. It is not yet time maybe? Maybe grief was a gift? Something you had to earn and there are still unfinished things I have to do. Then and only then I can make peace with the past.

I weep at the cruelty of fate. I am nothing now. I am draped in darkness. Bare walls haunt me. I want my children to laugh again. I want them to smile. I want them to dance, flirt, study and earn recognition. I hate being objectified. They think I am motionless. But I want them to understand that yes I am as helpless as they am but I am not in-human. My heart throbs with them. Agony rips me too. But children, I want you to understand that time passes. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging wills, but pass it does. This too shall pass. Friend, only if you could see in my eyes for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their bottomless depths could you see the contradictions to the words I have spoken.

Events come and go. I can see my neighbors, my brothers and their brothers enjoying the celebrations; Christmas, Eid, New year, Easter and what not... Ironic it is that the only day of celebrations I have is when the death rate is below 100.

My pain isn’t located. The burning is everywhere, in everything. My face; my arms; my back, permeating passes every inch of my flesh. It spreads through my entire body, eating away all my tissues and muscles and bones.

Why am I even saying that? When I already know how angry you are. Again, my fault. After all my children raged you. And I born them so it is all my fault. I have been trying my best to take the bull by horns. But I have no clear estimate of when I might depart.

I won’t ask you for anything. But I want you to pass my little message to your children. It is something my little 5 years old kid has to say: “I have been looking for my Mama for the past 2 months. She said she will get me my bottle of milk. I don’t know what happened next, she was just two doors away when a sudden boom and my home was engulfed in pretty yellow flames, although the air was choking hard. It was all dark then. I woke up in a strange uncle’s arms. He is a nice uncle. But he feeds me bad leaves. I don’t like that taste. But there is nothing else to eat. My stomach growls. I miss Mama. They say she is safe with my brothers and sisters. Baba had gone to the super market 4 months earlier; he too danced with those flames. Mama said we will all soon meet Baba. But she had said we’d go together. Have you seen her? She has a beautiful face and she makes the best food in the world. Tell her I am waiting for her to come and take me back to our home. I too want to be with Baba. I miss my family. Uncle has nothing to say. But I promise I never committed bad. Maybe they misunderstood me for someone. So please don’t hurt me. Just give me Mama. I miss her.”

I am sorry. 

With love, 

From Gaza.

Here I sit,

Watching the seconds pass by,

Wondering when the night falls and the cycle repeats,

The tossing, the turning, the dreaming. 

 

Lying awake, 

Watching the seconds pass by,

Thinking to myself how life exactly changed,

And here it is again, 

The tossing, the turning, the dreaming. 

 

Thinking to myself,

How I never got the time to get in terms with it,

And despite how beautiful things maybe, here it comes again,

The tears, the darkness, the emptiness. 

 

Tossing, turning and waiting. 

Waiting to see,

This last time,

What takes the better of me..

 

We all have been there, we all have felt it for at-least someone in our life, and it’s that naive feeling we misjudge for something as pure as love most of the times. We don’t realise that it’s a cruel selfish world, that the one claiming to love us, is only there for themselves and that we would be left stranded as soon as either we are done serving the purpose or more ironically, somehow if we stop submitting ourselves like the freedmen the Romans used to feast upon. But once in our life, there could be those rarest of moments when perhaps it all makes sense. It all somehow falls in place, like the missing piece of the broken me I had no track of, comes swirling back into its dwelling. That’s when I saw her, the butterflies hit my stomach and the time lost its own track, when it felt that there’s no one else around and when I always had felt alone in the crowd, when my heart thumped like the drums of an ancient war band, and when the sweat broke my face like a glistening sheen till it rivulets making me realise it was tears.

It has been 18 years and it still feels like yesterday. I knew I wasn’t perfect, I thought of her as an adorable, comely, and suave girl who is only lost in her exploration of harmony. Her looks were so alluring, her smile so enthralling, and her presence so captivating. I could have never thought her to have anything for someone as imperfect as me but there she was, with her beauteous soul and her resplendent self, so innocent, so calm, a little nervous & shy, and yet so much vulnerable. I fell for her the day I saw her but I just couldn’t muster the courage to have her, to show her what she deserved and how I wanted to love her. I just couldn’t use her like the rest, I wanted her to have better, what she truly deserved, so she was set free to explore with her wings open, flying in the limitlessness of her blue, perhaps never to return, and that’s how I lost her. She was traumatised, for I let the birds of prey rapere her with their talons on the frozen lake, something I won’t ever forgive myself for. I wish I could only go back in time and change that, I wish I could only have made it all more purposeful; instead, it was all catastrophic for her.

Yes, I was careworn with my own battles but I couldn’t notice her tumbling either. It’s as if we were together but we were not. I always thought I would be the house she would call her safe heaven, but there was no one coming through the open door, until the tempest took it all away. The thought of her hating me and not wanting to see me no more was devastating, I couldn’t tell how much I missed her in those lonely nights, when I wanted her to be there, when I wanted her to say “everything will be alright”. But I kept lying flat on the beach, into the cold sand, in the middle of the night, counting the planes; I was too high to think anything else but to justify that I deserve to be ignored. It was no surprise her not recognising my voice, afterall I was only back in the hope that someday, this bitterness would fade away and I could find the path to her golden heart.

I had her close to me somehow, I could feel her radiant presence around me all day long, but she was again surrounded by the raptor, shattering herself piece-by-piece, giving her everything, but she seemed blissful and I was only content with that. “Isn’t this what you always wanted”, I asked myself. She meant the world to me and without her, my life would be empty so I never wanted to take her smile away even though she was sloping towards self-destruction. The demons had been able to enter her realm when the sky broke apart but her realm was a fairyland, mesmeric, ravishing and statuesquely symmetrical. It were the cold windy nights somewhere in the north, when she was close again, the shivering of my soul was ever so evident although I didn’t felt cold outside, I couldn’t hold back no more, I had to shield her, I was her knight. There was nothing more beautiful in this world than what I felt. Being close in such perfect harmony, and when I held her hand, I could feel my soul trembling; I never wanted to let go, I wanted to be her home again.

In that hour of need we both bonded but it was a plague of self-doubt that struck fiercely again. To love and to hold on made me feel alive again, but I was as good as dead carrying that lost soul back once again to the same world of disenchantment and neglect. I wish I could shriek my lungs out and tell her how much I loved her and how I always craved for her. She was taken again, by her own choice, unknown, unwanted, aloof, cool & distant, and I could feel my heart wrench like a twisted straw ready to be cast-off. I could feel myself wrecked a million times, it was nothing new but it was all my own doings. I believe that was not new either. What could I do, I was only trying to settle everything around. I kept running recklessly in the maze, all lost with no track of where I was going, trying to save my jenga tower. All I could do was to watch it collapse and with it my dreams, aspirations and hopes for a better tomorrow.

Now that it all has been done with, I want her to know, that she filled the void in my heart with her love, maybe I was selfish not being able to provide the same in return. You are the candle light of my darkness revealing me the true meaning of love. I have been dreaming about all of this, it’s just I couldn’t ever express it. Not a moment passes when I don’t think of you. You made me see the beauty in everything there is. You taught me the meaning of love. Finding you was like looking for a needle in a field of grass, the more I search the more I get lost in it. No one has a perfect past but we all have stories to tell; while you could never have me listen, you never got tired of hearing me out. Loving me with all my imperfections and crazy antics, even when I was under the weather, you never gave up on me my love. From being my best friend ever to the love of my life, you were, you have and will always be a part of me. We complete each other in ways we thought were not even possible, always together, through your golden heart, never to be separated, stitched unruffled, through the connecting thread of love.