Everything has its place and time

Sometimes, the world has a way of breaking your heart. And in this moment, of dramatic melancholy and self-pity, I blame the world. Because of the massive distance and miles that separate me from the people I love most...

My mama tells me good people are 'lend' to us for a while, to better ourselves and they leave to maintain the shared relationships. For appreciation can only occur with a loss. We will take for granted what is in front of us if we have someone with us for too long...

Maybe.

Truth be told, I have philosophized for years in this blog about "goodbyes". And I've become a little skeptical of "hellos", for they are mere temporary flickers inevitably leading to "goodbyes". 

It's a small world when you know someone-

But it bewilders me how big the world becomes when you have to say goodbye.

The visage conceals

The water is calm,
& to realize my reflection still there
is reassuring

When my eyes are closed,
I can listen distinctly
the battles that wage within me-
between me

Strawberry

Feelings ripen too,

Like strawberries

Fiery red, bursting with sweetness

To bruise and be soften with age.

Love buds like a strawberry.

Economic principles

In order to get something, you must give up.
Like the economic principle: trade-off

The more I get into my economics courses...the more I start realizing that we become more calculative if we keep conscious of what was given up. Expecting gains from losses ironically loses the original purpose-

Of sincerity.
Sincerity cannot be measured, counted nor calculated,
can it?

Convocation

I can never forget how emotional I felt walking down the red carpet. It felt as though a thousand sacks of sand were lifted off my shoulders. Something in my chest released itself making me feel lighter, as every step I took led me to frames of memories flickering in my mind. I thought to myself, I worked 4 years for this but my parents waited their lifetime. This day was promised to them 12 years ago, when we left all that we called home.

I knew my aunts, grandaunts and grandparents were watching me on live-stream. And when I stepped forward as Dean Plourde pronounced my name to receive my degree, conscious that the camera was cast on me, I remember missing them terribly. I was more sad than happy, it was hard to pull my cheeks to smile. I wanted everybody I knew to be physically where I stood, on the stage with me.

When I picked up my official degree, I thought how ridiculous it seemed that so many people worked hard for my name to printed on a pretty sheet of paper. It was a degree inked of unseen sweat and tears of my family members, along with strips of sacrifices made by my parents.

But to see how happy mama and ayah were after, made me soften a little. I actually started crying when mama hugged me after the ceremony. I remember a man feeding his little boy cupcake (probably a mature student who graduated) who smiled and nodded my way observing me, as if he understood what I was feeling.

This day meant more for parents than it did for me....they gave up their lives and everything they had ever known for my sisters and I. No piece of paper with my name on it can compare to things they've endured. I owe my life to them, and my hereafter too, inshaAllah.

Homogeneity

Emotions stirred,
Like spoonfuls of honey in warm milk.
How sweet-
Soothing almost, by the familiarity.

Rendez-vous

When I see the sun and moon on the same horizon,
my heart soars-

For nobody misses

Like the moon who yearns for the sun

& spends relentless nights chasing meteor tails

In hopeless longing to meet the blushing sun,

on the same parenthesis of time again.

There's a story before, between, beneath & beyond everything seen. 
But we'll never know it all. 
Thus makes our judgments mere assumptions.

Graduation, in gradation.

When you stand on the summit of a mountain you'll start to realize
How infinitely small you are compared to the endless sky.