Imagine this:
Me, who only speaks English
Me, who is moving to Japan
Me, with the Puerto Rican father and the Italian mother
being called a terrorist
for scrawling Arabic in the corners of my notebook.
"It's nothing personal," you say
"I'm just calling it like it is."
I sit in silence and wait for the teacher to stop this,
Say something, Say anything
Say No, Sofia would never hurt another soul
Her silence is a gag over my mouth
handcuffs on a chair
a knot in my belly plummeting out of control
If you had asked, I would gladly have shown you how to write your name
You start with the crooked smile of the letter "ba"
the calculated decrescendo of "ra"
"ya"'s sensual arc
I could show you how to write the guardian "alif"
or the embryonic "noon"
nestled safely inside of her calligrapher's womb
But somehow, between my pen and your eyes, the phrase

I miss you

written in near flawless script
turned into a threat resembling

someone is going to die

If you had asked, I would have told you of how I met an Arab
(you spell that: lam ba noon alif noon ya )
who loved music
(meem waw seen ya qaf alif-maqsura)
and Poptarts
(there's no P in Arabic)
and me.
Let me teach you how to write my name
so the next time you decide to throw around the word "terrorist"
you'll remember that those letters spell a name that represents
a living breathing person
and your prey whose name is spelled with the same alphabet as mine is
a living breathing person
Come here
Unclench your fists and take my pen
You are smart
I will teach you
Trace the shapes like me
and I will show you where you went wrong
be it in life or just now with these ancient ABCs
"Seen" is like a W except she's proud of her curves
and has a left hook that would make any man jealous
"Waw" is an air-headed guy whose body is an afterthought
with hair that billows in the wind and is never far behind
"Fa"
Treat it like a cobra
***** and proud
but dot it, mind you
That's the serpent's crown jewel
"Ya"
The singe-winged bird nesting on two tiny eggs
and "Ta marbuta"
There's no clever way to teach you ta
You just have to learn it
Now
use your two good eyes that are so good at judging and tell me that my name is not alive
The queen and the mother
The feminist and the prideful lover
And the misfit
I can be all of those
You will be all of those
Come here
There's enough space in my margin for you
Practice celebrating your secondary identity
now that you know I am not a terrorist
I won't hold a grudge because you misunderstood
I can't blame you
You just didn't know how to see

Some things in ourselves are really hard to change
My main concern in life was
not being enough
for something
for my courses
I was self-doubting
I was really afraid
How could I start again after all the fun months I have spent?
How can I keep a routine?
How can I get back to study and
focus on myself?
How can I spend more hours in the library
and become more confident?
Waw how much these questions are important
And how much they involve
Every student in the world

And I answered them with other questions
Why do I need to be the best to succeed?
Shouldn’t learning be a fun thing?
Where it is all about accepting yourself
And expanding your knowledge
Why do I always feel the need to be more than I am?
Why do I have to become better?
Who said that the version of myself right now isn’t enough?
Why do I compare myself to others, to phones , to machines?
Why do we do this to ourselves setting up goals
Instead of waiting and seeing what life will offer us
Why can’t we trust that good things will happen
They can take time some time
And that’s okay
We should be patient with our fragile souls
Observe this world and see its hidden beauty

I need books to make me feel better
I need to read about a writer’s boring life
Accept life as absurd, boring and alienating as it is
Accept that everyone has a dark side
Involve emotions and feelings in everything I do or say
Let go instead of holding on