I read in one of Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, that one day people will look at his paintings and say “he felt things deeply and tenderly”.
I see one of his paintings and my body shakes in his short brush strokes uncontrollably. I see one of his paintings and his suns twirl in my head’s ******.
I read that in the Middle Ages, they debated on whether or not to remove female seeds, so that the child does not suffer from excess of emotions.
Hysteria is born out of the womb, I look the etymology in the eye as I hold my pen to my womb
I stab it three times, but the words are still there. I see that I still am, so I stab my heart instead….
I bleed out Art ..  Art ..  Arteries, the etymology stares me back in the lungs. My pen drops dead.

Sometimes, i forget to capitalize my "I"s.
i wonder if it's because English is not my first language,
or because colonialism forgot to teach me to capitalize "I" but remembered to teach me to capitalize "English"

I suffer from/am blessed with synesthesia, I smell, taste, and feel color. Blue has always been vital to my being, whether it is the color of pajama sets and bed sheets, or speech bubbles on Facebook Messenger, I have grown too attached to blue that the blank whiteness of this document loses its neutrality and starts to hurt.

They say blue is a cold color, then they associate it with a feeling so strong that it has the same symptoms of a heart attack, they turn it into a synonym for heartbreak, and make it the sponsoring color of music meant for heartaches. I associate blue with hearts because I have a list of life elements and they are all blue: writing ink, oceans water, night skies, and I recently added to that list the sanctuary I made of your-my conversation. It is 3:57 pm and I am having the blues, listening to blues, thinking of blues. It is 3:58 pm and my body is burning, no amount of tears my eyes shed can cool me down so no amount of colorologists can convince me that blue is a cold color.

Two months ago, I discovered that the poor human eye was not able to distinguish between green and blue until recently, the poor human mind could not read blue, and I wonder if that means we only recently started to know grief.

I have grown too attached to blue but they opted for green in traffic lights. They preferred green to blue when it takes blue to make green; Blue is the parent. They favored green over blue when blue is the third primary color and the other two family members, feisty red and powerful yellow, are already present in traffic lights; Blue is the parent that never came home. Green stands for progress. Green is a sacred color in Islam. Green is the color of every “environmentally-friendly” label when mother earth is more blue than green, and I wonder if that means this planet has seen more grief than peace.

Suicidal tendencies are condemned infinity worth of light years in insanity, but the bloodlust shown in children's palm imprints on stale walls after every Adha Eid is righteousness: sanity in all its glory.

Flashbacks in action:
1-It's sunny, it's 3 pm, July 1st 1750, a man murders another. The first is a landowner, the latter is a slave who tried to stop his master from ****** his wife, the woman is also one of his master's slaves and that reads: he owns her womb. It's starry, it's 10 pm, July 1st 1750, two slaves discuss the the incident that occurred earlier in agonized whispers, one of them says "he declared his head ripen and ready for plucking when he tried to say no", the other replies "he must have been insane".
2-It's  raining, it's 8 pm, January 1st 1950, a man kisses another. The first is the second's lover, they meet in secrecy twice a week in an abandoned meadow, their footsteps echo the two aforementioned slaves' whispers. It's raining, it's 8:05 pm, January 1st 1950, a third man announces his presence by stepping out of a nearby bush, a step so loud it could be confused for thunder in such a weather, "I only followed you here because you're my friend, and It's because I'm your friend that I will tell you this" he tells his fellow scholar "I won't tell on you if you try to seek help, we now have treatment for homosexuality, you don't have to spend the rest of your life mentally ill".

Only those who show no sign of imprisonment in their desire to be a continuous flow of living generations further are mentally ill. Those who rob others' time,  space, and energy are only trying to live. We feast on mountains, sunlight, water, plants, and other animals. We claim consciousness as our bride. We claim reign as our fate. We claim superiority. Cannons as either angry battle cries or smiles fired in the face of any other, cannibalism shows as we shake hands. We're constantly on the hunt, as both preys and hunters. But that's the way life goes isn't it? Tigers hunt ghazals, ghazals hunt grass, and earth hunts us all the moment we fall or die. We even have a name for this hierarchy of sacred hunting: the life cycle. Such an inappropriate name for a process fueled on constant deaths.

But this juxtaposition is the ultimate definition of all there is. We have also been throughout time told by doctors, by the ever changing science, that in order to be the most active during the day, we need to sleep well during the night; to get eight hours of oceans-deep sleep every time sixteen hours pass on. We say pass on to mean die but the same two syllables have two more meanings; all hail semiotics. To pass on means to die, to give, and to evolve. this I was taught by my mother, and although I don't trust her judgment when it comes to people she remains an exquisite cook, and an exquisite writer. She distinguishes the different spices and synonymous on first sniffs and I will always be grateful for her trial to pass on her nose, high and proud, to me.

Van Gogh passed on his seven sunflowers and twirl-spiral Suns to the humanity whose tongue doesn't always speak in haikus. Van Gogh's second sunflowers burned in Hiroshima. Van Gogh had been rumored to eat yellow paint: as yellow as his sunflowers and twirl spiral Suns, because he couldn't eat the yellow land, the yellow skin, the yellow Japanese utopia. Van Gogh believed that there is a Japanese utopia, Van Gogh believed in the existence of a utopia, Van Gogh believed in the no place, Van Gogh passed his no place on to this humanity.

I inherited paintings in public museums, and paintings on tree leafs. I inherited orchestras in far away operas through the Interwebs, and I inherited movies and dances and all the beauty that this humanity managed to produce. I inherited life, and its deaths, and I can see how in the very root of its injustice there is also grace growing, that clean sheets are not the warmest. I inherited mental illness, and I inherited stale stability. I inherited love, love, and more love. I inherited preys and hunters and I inherited the ability to see the beauty of the accuracy, the run, and the play on capabilities. I  inherited prey and hunters and I inherited the ability to see how preys are hunters and how hunters are preys.

Diapers and politicians
need to be changed frequently
and for the same reasons

********

los panales y los politicos
hay que cambiarles a menudo
y por los mismos motivos

I've loved you for years,
and their seasons taught me that:
*all that springs must fall

I'd go to the airport an hour before the arrival time of your plane even though I know it'll arrive an hour late.
I'd go an hour early because I want us to share your first experience of Egyptian timing.
Egypt is not bound to the pace in which Earth loops her way around the sun like the lake swan, because Egypt has always preferred belly dances to ballet and it shows well in weddings.

I'd take you to your first Egyptian street wedding.. Show you how we set it up using khayameya, the same khayameya we use for funerals.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the poorest neighborhood in Cairo, and let you see how rich it is.
dirt in abundance
azans in abundance
smiles in abundance
and colloquial namecalling in abundance.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to khan El Khalili, where you'd get lost between the smell of kebab and the scent of musk.
I'd take you to each silver shop there and count with you Hamsas as if we're counting stars and looking for the little prince.
I'd hold your hand each time we see a Hamsa.
I'd grab you by the hand and take you to the palm reader in the old ahwa that smells of antiquity yet serves fresh minted tea.
I'd  grab you by the hand because that's where your heart line is.
I'd take you to the Nile afterwards because that's where my heart line is.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you at evening on a Feluka louder in sound and light than one of your nightclubs, and let you see how it shatters the night as if it’s made of glass.
I'd take you at morning on a Feluka where the glass towers are, and let you see how arrogantly they stand on the river bank.
I'd love you until noon on a Feluka where our view would be the clean cold glass towers' reflection on the ***** warm Nile.
I'd name that Feluka "clean sheets are not the warmest"

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you on a journey on the 6th of October bridge, and let you see how the cars walk hand in hand like lovers, but keep on honking, breaking, leaking, like it's the end of their relationship.
I'd take you to downtown where street vendors are screaming their lungs out so loud that, due to the physical laws of the universe, their vigorous voices are no longer heard

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy, but I won't get you too close so that you won't smell the scent of accumulated
****, **** that smells of pollution, salt, and sorrow.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy but I won't let you stand too far away.
I'd take you the wall protecting the Israeli embassy and I'd take a step forwards with you, just one step so that we'd be close enough to see the rumble, and then I'll show you no more.
I'd take you to the wall protecting the Israeli embassy and let the rumble show you Egypt...
let the rumble show you the revolution...
let the rumble show you the sting of
عيش
حرية
عدالة اجتماعية
كرامة انسانية
carved as graffiti to be rewritten no matter how many times the government washes it away.

I'd grab a handful of Cairo's juxtaposition, and have you stick your tongue out and taste it.
I'd take you to the pyramids at night.
I'd buy us lemonade and tell you why I prefer using stones to metaphors.

I'll take you to my home and show you why this city is so worthy of love..
Why this city is so grey..
so loud..
so cruel..
and so beautiful.