I want to pick you up on a weeknight and take you down to Beirut, to alleys and streets you have never been to.
I'll take you to my favourite place for a happy hour drink, and after 9 p.m. we'll share one of the best bread loaves you will ever taste from the bakery I love the most.
Then you'll see me dancing while driving, for the first time, to one of those upbeat radio tunes.
And we'll end up in Jbeil, at the beach, running into the water for a late night dip; splashing each other and screaming like little kids and kissing each other every once in a while like the lovers we are in this very moment.
Then we'll sit by the shore and play games till we dry up.
And the clock will remind us that I should take you back home, wishing I could stay with you for a couple more days. And I'll try to make you stay in the car and you will hug me very tightly and then you'll forcefully leave because it is almost 3 a.m. and I still have a long way back home.



- LynnAA

Mama, I do not want to eat
and I don't want you to know it.

I am glad you do so well without me
but too bad, fears aren't what stay like rocks.
They breathe like fire and grow like children.
I lost them once and they never come back,
o my poor lost children I still love them!

Mama, I just took a proper shower.
I know I should not be so proud, but
the water was black and so cold and the soap and shampoo were mocking my filthy skin.
I was strong. I am strong.
I am glad you do so well without me.

I was Mother Mary once, you did not know it.
You have lots of grandchildren but I lost all of them so I cannot show you how they have grown like haunted trees and abandoned churches.
You taught me motherly love, Mama,
not how to prove it.

I became a garden but the minerals kept falling from
the pores and eyes. I could not be good soil.
The hibiscus and jasmine and frangipani I wanted to grow
are now as dead and confused as my chest.

My head is one native tomb.
How could I not find a name?

I am doing very well, Mama.

Just that I kept thinking I am at home.

i don’t know how someone as small as me
with bones that break at the sight of heat lightning
and heart strings that thread apart at the sound of his voice
could make anyone feel like the sun shines brighter
through kaleidoscope eyes—
you’re okay if it brings out the freckles on your face,
and you feel good, you feel alive
you say i showed you how to love in a new way,
that i taught you to be so much more okay with your tummy,
“it’s been very freeing and life is a lot better, thank you,”
but i feel like i can’t say you’re welcome
because i am a messy cliché of imperfect scraps and hypocrisy
loosely sewn together with
“you are strong you are strong you are strong,”
but i feel so weak i feel so weak i feel so weak
and i am not steady hands, they shake like
wet dogs after kiddy pool baths,
i am flower seeds that forgot how to bloom,
trapped below the surface of a garden that feels like quicksand
and i’m sorry but you don’t see all the mistakes i make,
all the words i’ve preached that look back at me
and laugh when they see
what i feel, what i think, who i am behind closed doors,
i’m sorry.
you keep hanging medals around my neck, and
they’re so heavy, and i don’t know
what to say besides i love you
when you speak words of adoration,
but please do not praise me, i am not good.