I say I'm a Muslim, but I can't tell anymore.
I can't tell from what goes in my mouth,
what comes out and hits you on the cheek
worse than a slap, harder than a mere insult.
I'm outraged, but what reason do I have?
On the outside I could be anyone,
and I usually am.
Sometimes I am Puerto Rican, Lebanese, or Black--
a child asked me once, and I just smiled back.

How sweet would it be to take every crayon from the box,
even now that the numbers have multiplied and
what was once simple 8, 12, 24, 36,
has exploded into a million colors with a million names,

to crush them into bitty pieces and swirl the mixture with water;
make it all into One.

so that if we hate another
(what other?)
we just hate ourselves.

I say I'm a Muslim, and I know I am
because when I give up all my frustrations and
my toddler tantrums, and I even give up yoga,
or rather it gives me up, thankfully so,
when I injure my back: I'm grateful for that.
What a knowing presence God is to take away that which harms
and restore that which fulfills.

But even to those who are still hurting
(and I often am)
there are these small remembrances that come
between this onset of tears and the next.
Whether the sun peers through the dusty blinds,
the ones you need to clean again--so soon,
and you see the light stream through, faintly at first,
until you are forced to open your eyes,
to remove yourself from the hate you've stewed in:
how simple is that?

I say I'm a Muslim, and it's a choice
I make every day or avoid until the next day,
even though that day may not be easily given.
And I forget that.
But when I see life slip away from young lives, old lives,

lives not yet born

then I have to remember
that I do not have the answers,
and every time I try to be dictator of my destiny
I fail miserably, miserably, miserably.

And now that I wrote this poem
and I felt myself think, no, truly feel for the first time in a week,
that my robotic expression has melted into a frown that stands
a chance at becoming a smile.

Now that I am human I am a Muslim.
Not perfectly so, but decidedly so.

(In memory Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha)

RIP Deah Barakat.  RIP Yusor Abu-Salha.  RIP Razan Abu-Salha.
the three muslim victims  of chapel hill shooting







because **Muslim lives also matters

Her name was Razan Ashraf Abdul Qadir al-Najjar,
From 7am till 8pm she helped the injured,
Tending to them on the fields of freedom.

This was her weapon,
Her white medical coat,
Now stained with her life’s blood.

“Her only weapon was her medical vest,”
Her Mother’s voice drowns in pain,
“She may have been small, but she was strong.”

The last time she saw her daughter,
“She stood up and smiled at me,
She flew like a bird in front of me.”

The angel of mercy,
Her goal was to save lives,
And offer relief to the wounded.

Her arms raised high to show she was unarmed,
She approached a victim lying upon the ground,
But the ******’s trigger only knew the language of hatred.

And a bullet blinked hard and fast,
The wrath of the single butterfly bullet was so brutal
It ruptured into three other medics.

A bullet designed to explode upon impact,
It lacerates and pulverises bone and tissue,
The Devil’s Banned Bullet.

It was a Friday,
In the month of Ramadan,
When the desert sand drank her blood.

A weeping Mother kisses a jacket
Stained with her daughter’s blood,
“I wish I could have seen her in her white wedding dress.”

Only the songs of lamentations now,
Grief shrieks through the streets without water,
And the world watches in censored silence.