I have travelled a thousand miles
covered myself in thousand styles
kissed the sand and touched the wind
loved and been loved akin
embraced the good and yes, I've sinned
lost sometimes and sometimes I win

one thing I've learned from the journeys made
by becoming a jack of all trades
by having scars of journey on my skin
by letting new experiences in
yes, I've learned this thing for sure
nothing is worth living for

© Ali Ashraf

Nostalgia is the little girl you see drawing on the sidewalk with colorful chalk.  Her favorite lollipop flavor is watermelon.  She also likes cotton candy and Blues Clues (she sings along with the theme song and yells “pawprint!” and “clue!” to her TV).  She is the girl who lives in the big blue house at the end of the cul-de-sac.  She wears silly bandz from her wrist up to her elbow and makes all the other kids want that limited edition glow-in-the-dark piece of rubber.  Nostalgia is a gets a little sad when she falls and scrapes her knee.  And sometimes― sometimes, when she breaks one of her precious silly bandz, or loses one of the jibbitz on her blue crocs, or doesn’t want to wake up in the morning but has to anyway― she gets a little sadder.

Nostalgia doesn’t really know what she’s going to be like in the future.  She wants to be a pet doctor, as she calls it.  She wants nothing more than to not be sad, but who knows who she will turn into.  Bitterness? Grief? Wistfulness? All she knows is she will eventually turn into someone else.  Nostalgia just wants to keep her silly bandz, keep playing in the woods, fake sick in bed, and never move out of her big blue house on the corner of the cul-de-sac.  Nostalgia never wants to grow up.  Does she really have to?

The world is grey.
Well...slightly more so now.
The nerve endings have healed.
Yet the numbness has lingered.
I stumble on my own feet getting out of bed.
Is it that hard to believe I’m simply.
Average.
I get more lost with compass in hand.
Although I can tell you how to find north.
Theoretical knowledge always worked in school.
But my life mentor is absent.
What happens when there is no teacher in gym.
A bunch of kids wandering the grounds.
Some fighting.
More aimlessly wagging their tongues.
Trying to figure out the social heirarchy.
Then there is me.
Smoking a cig at the edge of the property.
Day dreaming of past events.
Even then I secluded myself.
Unknowingly laying the ground work for the next ten years.
Countless routines repeated with different faces and surroundings.
Sometimes even the words would transition into the other.
In those moments I was living faux dejavu.
Losing my mind to my own reflections shadow.
If only I had read the letter My past self had written to my future self telling present me to listen to the mistakes I already made.
Maybe things would have been different.
The possibilities is what destroys the intellegent mind.
Not pain.
It’s the “why”.
The only question that will truly have no answer if asked enough.
And I can’t seem to stop asking.

Cover my body with a sheets made of silk
Imagine me walking amongst the daffodils
Under  a silver moon light
Lie there and watch
Hear the wolf's howling
Watch me coming to you and ask
"Shall we sleep or shall we sing
Or we shall weep for those whom are
no longer here? "
You said nothing, my dear.

You took my hand and quietly said
"I'll play for you the song you've always wanted to hear."
The man was holding his harp next to his chest and quietly his fingers the strings  embraced. He closed his eyes and played.
"What a beautiful song, I have never listened" - I said, "That it made me forget.. that I should let the man with the harp go away."



"Wake up, wake up!" - the man said, holding my hand.
I heard his voice in my head:
"It's just a dream."
"What a sad dream... " - I though,
"Such a sad poem I wrote",
"What a distant memory of a melody..."

pouring rain
falling down
your cheeks

cleaning up
every bit
of sadness
left
in your
fragil heart

I can warm you like a
cup of tea on a winter's day,
I can chill you like a
winter in the U.K.
I can lift you up and
send you reaching for the stars
or I can make you feel
the weight of a thousand pulsars.
I am the worst feeling in this paradigm,
while, at the same time,
I am the best feeling you can conjure;
I am nostalgia.

There was a time I wanted to go home
Rainbow acid pop in my grip
and grilled chicken in my gut
a power to pull my lips sideways
for a wistful smile.
I lie now at the base of a grave
sharing my chicken with worms
and snakes!
And snakes with their ugly fangs
rob me off my pop
and the evergreen beauty I thought infinite
Lost in my eyes
gone with my tears.
The fair land of my heart
barren of any light to harvest,
And I'm degraded through the mocking
momentum of life..
If there was any path to home at all
One to the rainwashed windows
and one to the tender fall
I would go back and stand tall.
Left to the hands of time,
Right, it is lost! There is no path at all..

i kinda miss the moments
the sunny days
or the ones that rain pink
rain red and orange and sunset and end of the beginning

when i walk by the cafe
the sign board urns into a cinema screen
rewinding to
reading books and
long discussions

spilling tea and
drowning coffee
and then drowning tears
and then just-

or maybe, i kinda miss the feeling
the warmth that came with every evening
home
familiar scents enveloping all senses
sometimes when i close my eyes
i can still see the sound of your smile

i can still feel softness in linked hands
and then empty in a hand
and then wet in my hand
wet from my eyes
and wet from my cheek

or, i kinda miss us
us when it was us
when it was you and me
and not just- me

whole, still
still one (1)
but

two (2)
without you
feels odd

i kinda just miss
you?

you
and your giggles behind your hand
bubbling up your throat and into the air
i feel like i'm in disneyland

you
and your words
sometimes soft and sometimes spiteful
but always sure
your sentences spell a delicate decision i could only dream of delivering

and even then, in my dreams
my mouth shapes to form syllables i cannot say

and even still, the only word that comes out of my mouth
is your name

you are the only thing i have ever been sure of

so when i say
i miss the moments
and i miss feeling
and i muss us

what i really mean to say is
i just really miss
you

sometimes you don't need a reason to justify how you feel
and i miss you
because, like loving you

i just do