La Habana

Remember by the docks - on the east-side of Havana, where I felt loved. With the universe entangled between my fingers and yours. Walking all wobbly in the warmth of Cuban heat. Remember feeling butterflies from the sound of Buena Vista in the air leaving me bubbly.

Remember walking in the sunburning heat to pay respects to Che at the revolution plaza and Lennon who sat waiting at a park. And enjoying local ice-cream by the beating waves of the Malecon, only to have a shy waiter telling us he has no convertible pesos for change.

Remember realising bliss in unfamiliarity. By a cute cafe in the corner of Obispo just by the El Capitolio with a glass of orange juice as I was inhaling coffee. While rickshaws pass by, and laundries dance on balconies.

Remember timelessness without knowing age.
And understanding nostalgia, without having experiences first.

sound -

i would tell you
that i miss the sound of your heartbeat against my own,
woven in and out like threads.

especially when i am drowned
by the sound

of my own heavy thoughts

a tune

For every clothes and skin peeled, the time has come to slowly pick them up from the floor. To shrug off as nonchalantly as we can, as if everything was just a dream - a sweet one, in fact.

And I can write this a thousand times over, but it will not erase the truth. That there is nothing harder in life than turning our backs to people we feel most strongly for, forcing us to be strangers once again.

There is pain in wanting something at your fingertips, but knowing you can't have it all - for it can never be entirely yours.

Everything was borrowed to begin with, with a loan date marking an end.
The book is read, and now I have to find my way to leave to rest on the shelf.

Where there is silence and glances between us - there will never be regret.
Only a breeze of nostalgia, of what should and could have been more, but neither of us dared.

Serendipity, in a city

Here we are, in the most quaint corner. Dotted on the point of the map. Across the Atlantic - in a city so rich in history. This is me - and you, in a quarter among colourful houses and a fountain. Sipping drinks over lunch in Alfama. Where even hanging laundries seemed so pretty. Where narrow alley-ways and true blue skies meet. Where hills and paths of streets shyly reveal views of the sea. Bookmarking frames in my memory.

Here, aimlessly we wander the streets into the night. Among tourists and locals alike. While acoustic strings and wonderful men sing to midnight. While I trail away pieces of me - like breadcrumbs on these cobblestone steps.

Here, where violins and strings made me stop on my tracks. Sitting on the white balcony of a closed Camo Convent, we arrived a little too late. Yet as if it was meant to happen. The sound of "The Prayer" tugged away from the air melodically, and straight to my heart, as it trickled its way down my cheek.

Here, we missed the sunset - overlooking cliffs. Yet, the waves and wind that rushed before me, made me feel a familiarity of tininess I have felt once before this. Remember kayaking under the grotto hours before? How perfectly nature arches itself. How lively the sky seemed - reminding me to breathe when I feel restless and breathless by such beauty.

Here, under the stars of a breezy night. Tell me things. Of family. Alluding to unconditional love I know you are capable of. Of which maybe I will never have, but I may have glimpsed briefly.

Here, in transit - in between reflections. In silence. Between stolen glances you sneak, until our eyes meet. Make me believe again, that I can be less alone. Make me believe again, that I am home - even though I am far away from where I should be.

Here, where many fado singers echo the voices of the country. Little did we know that they would serenade us, while my hands clasped between yours - and my heart, soul, breath feel as full as the moon above me.  As we sit in the attic of the hostel on our last night, overlooking the castelo - already reminiscing the mysterious paths and moments of wandering lost in this city. Sighing away, sharing secrets and stories.

Here, for a moment, I was able to see and feel everything before me. It was as if wandering lost, allowed me to collect myself - and find all of me.

tongues

you can learn many different languages

be fluent in many tongues,

yet still lose words to describe what you are feeling.

spine

The spine of the book sits firmly in the middle
to hold pages of the story together.
Something firmly in the middle of me
holds my story too, 
& it holds me together as well
                                                  -but it isn't my spine.

Litany

Hi, you. How are you? A litany of rhythm rings through my mind. In repetition. Like a catalogue of time. Of winds, and unwind. There is no meaning in mere recitation. 

There are many unspoken edges. Many words to say, but little meanings can be left unconveyed. Maybe they were conveyed. Or my mannerisms were off.

But we are often misunderstood. We like to misunderstand each other. Or not. Maybe misunderstanding is something we both are great at. Unintentionally, like the many things we have done in the past. In our lives. Accidentally. Life is a bucketlist of mistakes afterall, with bullet-points that leave holes marking moments we once thought were bullet-proof.

So here is a little post-it note, if you will. I have many words, maybe little meanings. Or does it matter, for it will all be misunderstood anyway.

For it all,

I only wish

that your mended heart

be safe to embrace again

bare and windswept;

morning comes,
light stream through sheer curtains-
my shadow disappears
for she no longer recognizes this body

while birds sing sweet greetings
only silence bids by time,
there are fissures under my eyes
yet, i am reminded
that even mountains wear away

dull ache sits in my chest
how sweetly tingling bitter this hints
i still enjoy to faculty to feel

you will forget me,
like the wind that sweeps graceful tall grasses
i am ethereal.

Realness

Everything is not as it is told. There is little left to sow, too little left to know.

I have one life, yet I have led many lives. You can spill your heart to a thousand paper pages of sorrows. But every page turned will still feel the same to your fingertips. Out of ordinary. Desperate for a design, for a purpose, for an inked marked skinned to my dried celled skin to tell me-
To just be.

All of the things once said and wanting of each other to be. The compass of my heart is out of tuned, for the needle no longer points north. I have no understanding of this. I have no grip of this vertical reality, spun and twisted in ways I no longer find familiarity...so I just be.

I wish I hadn't felt realness. I wish I hadn't seen it. Tasted it. Smelled it like the wafting scent of your cologne.

For there is nothing harder than pretending to be strangers with another- no greater lie ever forced to live - when you know you have lived one too many lives with someone.

dear salvation

dear loneliness, you are sweet company
though you lay beside
a concave shell of a body
you know there's nothing in between

dear soldier, you are broken
you wear a smile,
to cover the stitches
of a torn up muscle
bruised and blue inside

dear fragility, you are strength
in this mirror before me
break so i can begin again

but these are little pieces of lies

of temporary things

Say Anything

"You should listen to your heart,
It's going to tell you what you need
Take care of yourself
Don't you worry about me"

-Tristan Prettyman

The same spot, but feeling different.

Sitting on the fourth floor of the library where I spent so much time in my first year of undergrad...hard to believe it was three years ago.

Here I am, first year again, feeling nostalgic.

Lines

Re-write a story told in your head a hundred times. The same story when penned down will have more meaning. But will it lose its original meaning?

I am not the lines of words I've put down. Nor am I how you interpret me. & believe me when I say, that there is more to me than what you think you've understood from reading between lines.

Windows

A window that I search for is one that opens my heart,
But every window brings a different view.
It doesn't take the eye alone to see,
Nor does it take the mind and what is within to understand.

For what it's worth, I hope you too, find-
& I hope you, too, be inspired and moved

by instillation of moments
in this parenthesis of time and wooden window
we've carpentered before us.

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.

Mama

A couple of days ago, I found out that my mama writes beautiful Malay poetries. For some reason, reading her written works this morning has left me feeling soft and shedding a couple of tears.

I don't understand what made me feel this way.
Maybe it is the realization that we have so much in common.
Or perhaps, that she reveals as a writer, the side she frequently hides from me as my mother....

Disclosure to closure

The night was cold. But as was every of the 8 nights in El Novillero. But I suppose there was something about that night that caused a surge of warmth inside of me. In the back corner of my mind, I knew my emotions played a role in generating this subtle heat. I was volatile. Fragile and filled with feelings I could not comprehend. At any given moment, I knew could burst or break. But what kept me together was the presence of sixteen others around me. 

And the basketball.
The dark brown, and barely inflated ball being thrown around seventeen of us.
And I thought then. That if a flimsy ball was capable of withholding what little left of air in it, then I could contain myself. It was reassuring in some weird way to believe that I was made of rubber. 

So we sat and some of us sang, whispered and reflected. All seventeen of us, on the cement court between two nets. The very court that soaked our sweat for a week. Where the highland sun blazed and burnt our skin. Where little Maya Kiche girls and boys giggled and teased me into distraction, between wheeling wheelbarrows and shovelling gravel. Now all I hear are echoes of their laughters and apparitions of their infectious smiles...


At some point, we laid on our backs, against the cold, grey ground. In silence.

The infinite stars above me. Winking away at almost every inch of the darkness. I searched for the Big Dipper, and could barely locate it. I finally found my voice to question my friends if it was possible to see Big Dipper from Guatemala. Someone responded affirmatively, yes.

The only constellation I had ever known to trace in my lifetime. The very one that willingly reveals itself to me almost every time I sought for it. The same one that I saw on the bus to Montreal on the way to the airport before our flight...Big Dipper had camouflaged itself into its peers of million others.


And I was taken aback.At the beauty designed into perfection above, and presented itself to me. The universe opened itself. I felt tinier than the stars above. And the hills and mountains all around offered relief. I was overwhelmed, yet my heart was full. Filled with love I could not tell then if I deserved. I was experiencing seventy-five emotions at once, then finally I found calmness.


Like I understood everything, in that moment of epiphany. My surrounding- from the sky to the ground- embodied an experience I had frequently thought about only in my head and would sometimes reveal with words. It was surreal. My train of thoughts turned into a physical experience, resonated by the stars, sky, and earth around me. It was a moment of disclosure and of closure. 


I realized how infinitesimal I was. How vulnerable. My existence was limited, and my capabilities are restricted to what was prescribed to me. I became aware of my fragility, and how fallible I was. All throughout my twenty years, I have been teasing with the idea of "changing the world". The thought had sowed ego, yet at the very moment I felt weak. Yet it was that moment of weakness that I realized, I am only human. There is a higher Being, and He knows me.


I accepted everything thrown to me. I accepted that my stay in a country I had made my own, was temporary. I accepted that I may have been a foreigner, but this earth is my home and not mine alone. I accepted that I have a place to return to, and more tasks to fulfil. I accepted that it was possible to know love, even if language is incapable of expressing.


And probably the most sobering thought was this. I accepted that I am confined to my limitations as a human, and although I will never change the world, I know I am capable of some things. And these things begin with myself. I am capable of loving, sharing, helping and learning.



The night was a gift.
And as many have promised eternity before the stars, I knew this was a memory that will last eternally with me.

And it has. This is a memory conjured up so frequently. Often during my darkest days. Upon my return, I have often found relief and comfort from reflecting on this memory. It serves as a constant reminder of who I am and what I am capable of. More than anything, it reminds me that I can be anywhere yet still be at home....as long as the sky and stars still hover above me. And as long as I have faith sown within me.

Discursive

For a moment, I slipped.
Into a period of time, into a stream of consciousness.
Into a moment. Of simpler things.
Of innocence and fragility. Of a line.
No-
Of many lines.

The beginning of stories. Not just any, but mine.

It was the point when my felt-tip pen touched the crisp paper. Where pureness and white became infected with ink. 

With words. But not hollow arrangements of letters accumulated. These were sentences written from the linings of my soul. They were hidden, but I sought for them. And I found them. Each pronouncements exclaimed a verity. A truth. A part of me, exposed. Into a realm of subjectivity, to be analysed and judged. & I thought, then. Cares who? Have I much to lose?

But I am conscious. Self-conscious. Aware of my fragilities. Tender with my imperfections. So I sought to stitch them. Such I did, to my skin and it became a part of me. Every dicta becomes a tattoo.

Am I ashamed? Yes. Often, in fact.
But one has to experience humiliation to know humility.
I reveal to share. To define. To make sense.
Of this madness and chaos that surrounds me.

I reveal to search and find, the meaning of my own humanity.
I write to grow and perhaps to figure out-
The difference between
Writing to remember, and writing so I do not regret and forget.

Dandelions

Dandelions. A whole spread of them. If I were a ladybug, wandering the patch of grass, I'd be trapped. Suffocated in a field of never-ending dandelions. But I am. I am the ladybug.

While I witnessed the rain pour against the wind shield of the car, showering the dandelions outside. I felt trapped.

By my complicated mind.
By my idealism.
For all that I have worked for-
The changes I'd thought to have sown in myself.

Words. Words. Words.
Empty. Empty. Words.
How pretentious of me.
For my words lack value.
The more I speak of it, the less sincere I'd become.
Words are arrogant. & my arrogance is translated between words.
There is no change if I keep speaking of it.

But the ladybug, it will find an end. It can fly. To escape. And liberate. Like the white florets of the dandelion blown by the wind. Perhaps, this too shall pass.

Blue Skies Turned Grey

I’m not down, not anymore
Thinking I know now, that I’ve always known it all
I’ve spent hours on this street
Effortlessly dreaming and glancing away
Wasting hours of my time
Reliving the past
Regretting what’s lost
Wanting what I don’t have

Moving along now
But I go nowhere
By the stop sign I turned and remembered
This was where we stood
As I recall replaying the words
As if you’ve gone so far away
But I can't be too sure, so
I continued walking,
Walking the way, while

Blue skies turned grey
Sweet songs of sadness humming in my head
Foolishly playing pitying myself
Secretly I laughed
I’ve spent hours on this street
Reminiscing every moments
Living in the past
Doubting what I’ll lose
Waiting for what I will never have

So I continued to wait
Maybe you'll come
Hoping things will change
Waiting for someday to always be
The same sweet September again

-September 2007
My first poem.