"Madam, would you kindly remove
this arrow from my heart?"

"No, I think I'll wait until infection
sets in."

"How cruel you are."

a never ending rhythm
we're a matching tempo
following the flow

Setting the strings
Held so tight
strung just right

you're the melody
in my beating heart

E - Everyone
T - That
H - Has
E - Eggs
R - Really
E - Expended
A - A
L - Lot
.
.
A song for this:
bad idea! by girl in red [E]

It’s one in the morning.
I zoomed into Lisa’s room
and threw myself on the bed where she lay reading
in a near virtuoso, Fosbury flop.
She bounced, jostled by my mechanical bed wave.
“I hate goodbyes,” I said, indignantly.
“You’re not strong on hellos” she said, not looking up.
“They’re so bone-marrow deep,” I went on, “they steal hope away.”
“Did that sound pretentious?” I asked her silence, a minute later, somewhat self-consciously.
Lisa took the yellow, #2-pencil out of her mouth—just long enough to answer.
When she studies, she chews on them, seemingly eating them like french fries.
“Yeah,” she says, “but I get cha.”
“I know,” I said, smiling at the ceiling, because in a rooted and real way, she always has.
I’d be a different person if we’d never met.
I feel very grateful for that.
“Your boy’s flown?” She asked, using her pencil to hold her page and finally looking up.
It was an ironic, near-rhetorical question, she knows he’s gone and she knows I know she knows he’s gone.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
.
.
Songs for this:
4am by girl in red
Don't Stop The Music by Rihanna
blushing! by BETWEEN FRIENDS

a story of firelight, clarity, and the homecoming of a soul back to herself


There are some who carry a fire
so quietly,
you’d only see it
if you’d known the dark yourself

It lives beneath silence
Beneath poetry
Beneath the long, slow ache
of having been kept in pieces
by those who only wanted her
that way

She once danced barefoot in sea foam.
She once laughed without apology
But the world found her too wild,
too bright

And so, her flame was hidden
Tucked beneath beauty
Tucked beneath obedience
Tucked beneath seduction,
where it could be wanted
without being understood

There were those who praised her darkness
not to heal it,
but to keep it fragmented..
Passed around, from man to man;
each, feeding off her trauma
like wine at communion

They spoke her name like a spell,
fed her flattery disguised as reverence,
called her “muse”

while binding her
to their emptiness—
keeping her soft enough
trying to wrap her back
   in velvet fog

   to possess
   but never  protect



But the truth was always there:
a longing not to be touched,
but to be known

And far from their fog,
in the wide, holy silence of the desert,
a fire had been lit—
long before she was ready
Not to summon
Not to ******
But to wait

She didn’t arrive quickly
Clarity is never quiet
And when she moved toward it,
their voices rose
A full court press of shadows—
pulling, twisting,
offering her everything
except herself

But she remembered
Not all at once..
Just enough

She remembered the fire.

And she came.

Not with promises
Not with plans
Just barefoot
Just brave
Just her

And someone else came too—
not a child,
not a man,
but a sacred presence
she’d known since the nights
she almost didn’t make it

The Mediator

He did not speak in poems
He chanted something deeper
He dismantled pinecones
like prayers
He did not explain
He existed

   And in his eyes,
   her divided selves
   saw each other again—

—the one who had hidden,
who had been used by those  bringing
their passion-veiled hidden love of  Iblīs
in to her room..  into her father's house
as she burned quietly behind closed door
under the floorboards of her life;

—and the holy one of God,
the one they feared,
the one  she  feared,
the one that could not be claimed
or chained
or cast in velvet light

The sacred and the shattered
stood before the fire
and did not turn away

And the one who had waited—
he never moved toward her
He simply tended the flame,
making room
without demand

When she finally spoke,
he answered with a voice
that sounded like something
she used to believe in

She asked,
“Why didn’t you come find me?”

He said,
“Because you weren’t lost.
You were divided.”

And she wept,
not from sorrow—
from recognition

Later, as dawn whispered at the edge of the sky,
she asked what no one else had ever let her ask:

“Is there a place for me?”

And he said:
“You don’t have to be finished
to be home.”

And that’s when she stood.
Not to flee.
Not to perform.

But to become.

The sacred self took the hand of the shadow self.
The dark one was no longer exiled.
The holy one was no longer alone.

And together—
they walked toward the sea.

She could see her father on the water,
laughing in his little boat,
calling out to her to bait the hook again.

And she laughed—
really laughed.

Because she was no longer
just surviving.
No longer  the little girl
forced to apologize
for her very own existence.

Or exploited  by others
for the beauty that is within her

   She was whole.

She didn’t need the fire to keep burning.
She carried it now.
Inside.
One flame.
One name.
One woman.

At last,
the sign wasn’t moved.
The arms were real.
And she walked toward freedom
as herself--

   Never again
   to be pulled down
   to the ground

   by her hair...
   for the "horrible offence"
   of simply  shining too bright