she wore the stars on her hand and she

wore the sky on her sleeves and she wore

the wind in her hair while the evening breeze

wound 'round her hand like a emblem of love

and she walked and she walked and she walked

she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

she wore her dreams broken, she wore her dreams whole

love-bites of her life on her skin and her soul

and she stood in the haze of the dimming days

but she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

you can find her and tell her that she is a dream

the most beautiful silence that you've ever seen

and your roses will wilt and your roses will bloom

and she'll live all the days in between

because she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

and you can write her down so she is read again and again

because i will tell you how she wore her pain:

she wore the stars on her hand and she

wore the sky on her sleeves and she wore

the wind in her hair while the evening breeze

wound 'round her hand like a emblem of love

and she walked and she walked and she walked

she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

A Letter To No One.

 Dear You,

I thought I would start off this letter with some kind of memory that was so beautiful, it'd hurt to remember it; of clear, grey roads and the windshield coloured with melting raindrops holding blurred images of daffodil fields (and I must tell you that I feel beautiful that I have lived to see the sight and have a distinct image of it in mind), but I will tell you instead that I like this red dress and that I just laughed harder than I have done in weeks. And I am grateful, believe me I am.

And I will admit I've been trying to put together some words but all they've seemed is second-hand and half-hearted. Like the staler version of truth and a shadow of me. But moments like these make me whole, they make me feel like I belong here, I belong here in this red shirt, these black buttons, in the silence that is walking gently into this room at 12:08 AM after a day full of sounds and summer. I belong here and there is a song in my playlist that tells me I will always find my way back home. How can I not, when I walked into the kitchen to a fully occupied table, long lost sounds holding each other close for they'd come together as one after a long time. How can I not, when I can hear the love in your voice through a half-broken telephone line and grinning from ear to ear. How can I not, when you add the two extra o's to my name when you say it so that I feel loved. How can I not, when I find myself speaking so easily to you when everybody else just knows me as the quiet girl. How can I not, when you tell me I am special and your favourite. How can I not, when you pull me into a bone-crushing hug and squeal with me. How can I not, when you are as little as three years old and you say, "I want to stay here," and I hold you close and you add, "With you."

"Why are you so quiet? Why don't you speak? Kiya kuch zindagi main kuch aisa hua hay keh tum nay kaha yar ab nahi, ab kisi say nahi bolna?" Classroom floors, a game of truth and dare, my surprised face and her curious face. "I just can't." Maybe that answer did not suffice but it was the truth. I am grateful, I feel blessed. And to tell you the truth, I am the safest when I stand on my prayer mat during the last prayer of the day and it is dark and nobody can see my face or hear me and I am safe still. And I told a friend that I am a Secret. We are beautiful, golden secrets. I wish I would've answered, "I love everything from a distance." My greatest strength is love, I tell you. I can love and I am grateful.

I will tell you the truth, my life is not about pretty scenes and neat rooms and sweet dispositions and phone calls or even friends. But I know yours isn't too. Ours is something more intricate, flawed, imperfect - beautiful. My life is about the buzz that Friday creates, about lovely hands dripping with mango messes, about being out of breath in the summer heat, about walking under roofs where generations of memories have lived and about living something that is entirely mine, about living a page of my own story book in the loudness of Karachi and the haphazard happenings of summer. I wouldn't change this, I wouldn't be anywhere else because I am living something beautifully flawed and I love summer, I love summer because it comes along with so many colours and stories and sounds and clenches them firm in it's palm so that there is cacophony and the photograph reels and the voice recordings are mine, entirely mine, forever mine. There is greatness in Memory, and there is greatness in living it. For now, there are so many that I am breathing them in and I am thankful for everything, the good and the bad and my story for it is mine. All praise is for God.


Suppose you ask, "Why don't you speak to each other anymore?" Suppose you ask why I hesitated answering the call. Suppose you ask why I am different than before. Suppose you meet the version of me that grew over the past year and I meet the year-older version of you and we look and suppose we tell each other in tones of surprise that we've changed. In the end, there is a clock in your room, there is a clock in my room and it ticks and it tocks and the minutes melt into the days and the days into weeks and the weeks into months and the months into years and the clock in your room carries the weight of all this time. Of all that it brings and all that has happened. Because moments happen when moments happen and it is beautiful because it is not our doing; moments come together when stories collide each other and it is overwhelming just to think that they happen - that they happen and that they are for us and ours and things happen in minute, days, weeks. Things happen, things change, people grow, I grow, you grow, moments happen - and moments later, you are at a different stage, in a different setting and things keep happening. So words fade and my moments changed me and your moments changed you and that is alright. And in such a state, when things start fading you know that they were brittle, temporary. And the permanence of unconditional love through it all is what is beautiful, and to carry all those moments inside you under a roof you can call home is also beautiful. I have faith in the permanence of unconditional love, and in the beauty of things that were always mine.

It is late, I should sleep. The good and bad thing about all days is that they end and so this one ends too. I am not happy that it ended, but I am not sad either. So I will be grateful that we made it through another day and tomorrow is a new task. I have learnt to not under-estimate the magnitude of 24 hours. So much happens. No matter what, our life is beautiful, complete with it's flaws. I believe it is and I see that it is. I am infinitely grateful, I am infinitely blessed.

Thank You for listening.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

I am not afraid to tell you that I have been afraid. It has been strange, but I only know how to bear the strangeness and wish it away through prayer. I only know how to sit up wide awake and wait for Fajar, and feel for a few tiny seconds the Medina air kissing the walls of my room awake. I only know how to feel the relief of seeing the morning winds dust off last night's fear.

I will tell you this: I do not believe in fairy-tales, I do not believe in happy endings, I do not believe in perfection and I do not believe in a perfect life, I do not believe in happiness that ache is not a part of. But I believe in loving regardless, loving despite; I believe in forgiveness, and loving again and again and again with the broken pieces dearer each time. I believe in miracles, I believe in breaking down. I believe in being beautifully flawed. I believe in forgetting the burdens of the Present upon looking at the blue of the sky and wondering about the things and people still to come and that it could never be easy, it could never be perfect, but what I feed from is the infinity of the universe, the infinity of my own being and the infinity of my prayers. Because I swear to God there is no moment more fearless than putting your hands together in prayer and how incoherent words said with a tear in secret and in fear could change the course of fate, and to say a prayer is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Dear friend, I am heard. It does not matter to you, but it matters to me. It matters to me how I stood outside the Physics laboratory in college desperate for a miracle and being handed with one. It does not matter to you, but it does to me. It matters to me that I know I am heard. And dear friend, losing hope is a terrible, terrible thing. They tell me how unfair life is, but I wonder also how unfair I am to life. When it brings me the winds and the evening skies and moments of silence, darkness, happiness and infinity - and all I see is despair. No, not this time. This time despair is not loud enough to distract me from what is rightfully mine and that is Hope. How unfair I am to life when I curse it for all the bad it brings when the rain can wash it away and I have heard somebody say, dear friend, that rain can wash it all away if you let it.

I may not be wise, but I mean to tell you that with a white bracelet on my hand, I can't help but believe in good things. They come and they go but they happen and that is enough. Good things, good people, and prayers. What is mine will always be mine, and what never was, never will be. And that's okay.

And dear friend, I have only told you it's going to be okay because everything is temporary, just like you and me. I have faith. And for faith, I am infinitely grateful,  I am infinitely blessed.

Thank You for listening.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

We wait all day, all summer, all year for the perfect moment, the perfect time, the perfect day, the perfect summer  - and here it is, tapping us on the back of the shoulder but we wait and wait. For a moment today I saw it. I saw that here is the breathtaking summer I wished I would have. More on that later. And while winter is serene, calm, flicking it's fingers through the pages of fate almost effortlessly - summer is heavy-set and big. It's all around, with that stench of Eventfulness. Pungent happenings of summer that sweat with me in the sweltering heat. Oh, cacophony. And winter is the long, deep breath taken in - summer is the scream.

I grow with my story. I grow while I loiter on this particular summer day and take in the wonder. The wonder of it all. The ceiling fan buzzing with my thoughts and words, a blender grinding noisily, the only sound I heard while I fell in and out of love with silence and things. And welding dreams made out of evening breezes in the summer heat, all in my head. An exasperated sigh, an almost-scream, frustrated words, all giving into the noise of it all. Karachi letting all voices loose as summer gallops through the city.

A lot has been happening. I told you. I told you I would grow. And so much more to come. My God created summer and everything beautiful and full of stories. And I take in other people's words, trace their outlines with my fingers, taste the words in my head and I know why there are cracks, why tears and sobs and desperation are trying to speak through them. I know because I link it all back to where I know all the Solutions reside - the heavens. I believe, I do. So I take it all in and resolve to remember that I have two hands and they are powerful when they come together and pray. My friend says that hands fascinate her. She says they can do things. She is right. I am fascinated too.

Lend a ear and listen. To the wind and to the people because they were all created wondrous. A stray word, the possibility of comfort out of nowhere (but we all know it's God that makes us listen). I bundled up everything that happened yesterday with some words and snippets of a conversation I overheard by the sofa. My ears registered some things: The Battle of Badar, things happening before that - bad things, constant struggle, never losing hope, glory. Mayooosi. Disappointment. Chase it away. Good things happen. Have faith.

For goodness and for wonder, I am infinitely grateful - I am infinitely blessed. It's a wonderful life. Colour. Noise. Summer.

Look around.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me. 

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

I've been meaning to write to you for a long time. I will make no excuses, and tell you that I only just built up the courage. Today has been good, it brought me laughter. Wonderful, warm laughter, the colour of love and of hope. And I took it all in, in large bites and breathed in the air while it was still ringing with joy and the winds were kind today because summer has taken to suffocate with me with words that I do not want to belong to me. And they take up the most space in my head and I dive head-first into the madness of my own being and I shed myself away until only I can hear me. I've always been quiet, serene to watching eyes and I will always will be. The chaos is inside and it will forever live there.

And I'm still trying to catch up with fate, while it brings me new stories and new people and other such universes. But I am thankful, I am, and I find infinity everywhere. I find it while resting my head against the window in a moving car and the infinite stories and secrets bundled in a corner of the roads, the houses, the very air that I take in. Then how could I be ordinary? How could you be ordinary? When we carry words at the tip of our tongues, and stories within our souls and gold carvings of love on our hearts - no, we could not be ordinary. Oh, these eyes have so much more to see and this soul has so much more to say and there is beauty in life, extra ordinary beauty, tragic beauty, and it is all for you and me. And don't you see the beauty in even our End being infinite? Oh, our ends, these words, our stories - praise be to God. This beauty can only belong to Him and it does and I am glad because I know He will keep it safe. And we will be alright. There is hope still, there is time still - it'll be okay.

Oh, I'll grow and grow and the heavens won't send down to me too great a burden to bear. What comes my way was always mine. Lingering piano notes in my ear and they let me hear what I want to, just like the wind. I'll be alright tonight, I have enough happiness to feed on. And I thank the heavens that I do and that there are beautiful people still. My prayers won't die down, no, they only grow stronger with time and with life. God will take me as I am, complete with my incoherence - I know He will. And I will grow and grow, and these hands will hold different things and touch different skins until they grow old and frail, but they'll still be mine and I will smile because I know that we made it through all of this madness and I was me all along. And I know now, that I will know then that I have strength and you have strength and it is great in magnitude and before you know it you'll be nearing the End, still breathing, still alive. You will smile and I will too, because we made it through all of this and we were always meant to get out alive until death greeted us with open arms. Oh, there is a greater plan - for you and for me.

Right now I do not care, for once I do not care if I sound beautiful but all I know is that I feel and I feel greatly and you've felt what I've felt, and I've felt what you've felt - and you're not alone because I know, I know that what it is, whatever it is, it is temporary and people can damage your knees and your elbows and even extend their reach to your heart. But they can never damage your soul and our souls and our sounds and our thoughts and our actions - that is what infinity is and God's infinity shall return to Him and Him alone. So it is alright. It's alright. There are mornings and there are sunrises and sunsets and plenty of words. And rain too, the smell of rain.

I am exhausted but my mind does not feel like it's going to erupt anymore and I have you to thank for that. For words, for prayer mats, for faith and for laughter, I am infinitely grateful. I am infinitely blessed.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me.

oh how it reeks of memory -
a gulp of air
                   that i swallow in
                   the croaking of an old, stained swing
                                                       and how it sways defyingly
                                                  no, i will not have mercy because not this time -
                                                   not this time have i swayed and swung
                                                   not this time have the winds sung
                                                 with me
                 but -
 here i lend a ear
to hear
that the breeze does carry my song still -
and the subtle sound of broken faith
and the hint of a prayer from Fate
                                                 so i turn my back
                                                 - and  i walk away

A Letter To You.

Dear You,

I wake up in the morning to feel that I am part of some vintage movie reel, dying while it fades, fades, fades. Fades until someone, an evil grin, a malicious smile, it rips apart the memories, takes the reel and runs with it through evening winds screeching behind it, wanting it back, wanting it back, wanting it back. Oh, I am vintage. Oh, you are vintage. Black and white, black and white. I see you again and again, in black and white, in dimmed colours and distorted sounds; screaming - screeching, loud and clear. And you. You come along and say and say and say. I write and write and write letters I will never send, letters my ink will never know, nor eyes will ever read. Letters of patience and of goodness still trying to breathe through screams, through thumping silence. Thud, thud, thud. Silence. Do you hear it? Vintage as ever can be. You give me words that I could say with beautiful grace and I could twirl around and around and be honest. Completely honest and brutally simple, brutally heartbreaking, brutally beautiful. Just like a vintage movie reel. Oh, you and I are part of it all, part of it all, part of it all.

But no - the later hours of the day arrive and there is a burst of colours. Have I told you again and again and again - that there is sepia and it is wavering. And then the sunshine from the heavens, the sunshine from my present, the colours of the now- the yellow and the bright and the pink - it bursts forth and it is too much for me to take. Madness. Madness in me. Madness in my colours as I try to run and collect them all - the yellow and the bright and the pink - but oh, how the sepia chases me. How the black and white runs after me and corners me and lets me scream while I hand over my colours so it can devour it completely, completely, completely.

Dear friend, so far I have not stopped even once to erase these words or to think over what they are or what I have written, and it feels good. It feels good to not stop, to run free, to be unheard, unread, unheard, unread. It feels good to have fought and fought with myself until I am dying inside of me. No, there is a part of me that dies and comes to life so it fills me completely, every inch of me until I am consumed, consumed. Wasted away, oh how they waste me away. My wonder. Your wonder. How we waste it away.

Dear friend, I am a universe. I have told you. I have. I am a universe and I will never cease to be. You will find me; you will always find me because I am there. I am there while the clouds cry, I am there while the sun shines, I am there while people die and people live; I watch it all until I am a part of it. Until I start living what you and they are living. I am a part of it. I will never leave. No, not completely. You will hear a trace of my words following you around and you will hear me when you won’t. You will see me when you won’t. Oh, yes. That is to be human. To be, to be, to be. To be forever.

Perhaps these are what my thoughts have been as I have let them jumble up and about in my head. Perhaps this is what they’d be like if I ever meant to write them. But I didn’t. I meant to write to you. This is for you.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me.

i do not know how
or where to sit and break -
perhaps on a mossy, wet log
quite as helpless as i
but the nearby town shall be busy and
the sun will be high -
and beside a quiet lake
quiet as inconsequent as me
i will talk to the waters – unheard all the same
of how the wind does not hear me when
i plead and i say –
won’t you take me away
won’t you take me away

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

If I was not afraid to say it, I'd tell you that I dream in little pieces, in little secrets that hold me together and my fixed gazes at nothing at all, when even the clatter of hammer and bricks and drills cannot drown the sounds out  - my sounds. And if I was not afraid to tell you, I'd tell you how I cannot stop wondering about the wind because it is nothing at all and I can still almost see it and it takes my breath away. And if I was not afraid of sounding insane, I'd tell you that the colours - the blur of red and blue and silver and even a sudden stroke of yellow - they've come to stay and with grace, because there are some of them that do not go away. And I see them, some of them - the red and the blue and the silver - even in the lazy shades of summer.

Dear friend, you can call upon me when you need me but call, so I know. Because you will look and you will look around and wonder where I am and what I am up to. And I'll be right there, hiding in the warmth of my own thoughts, needing to be called upon and afraid that I will never be. And I could tell you that I look into words like I look into the mirror, and that I taste them again and again, and that I look, I search for the splits like stubborn cracks on dead earth. So I can know. And decide. If they were meant for me or not at all. But I will choose to be silent because I am afraid that you will walk away and never call upon me. And I will feel as if I chased away those calls along with you. And I will be still and take each wonder and take it as my own. For I am of the world, I am of the heavens, I am of destiny - and what will always belong to me is my wonder. Dear friend, no one can take away the wonder from me because I will find it. It will always be there to call upon me. I need not be afraid.

Yes, I need not be afraid. But I afraid I am. Although I have come to accept that what does not come my way was never mine and there is goodness in God's decisions. Sometimes I think destiny is only a matter of where you and I will get - and how we get there will be ours, and only ours to decide. Perhaps there and only there lies the struggle and our choice of choices. And in the end, it does matter. Because no matter what anyone tells me, what ever I may bring upon myself - even the slightest bit of emotion - it is mine to give to myself and take it away as well. I choose to harbour it when it is a part of me, and I choose to be okay when I let go of it. And God? God will give me the strength to hold on to what is right.

You must forgive me for my incoherence, dear friend, because I have wanted to shed some of these words so that they do not weigh me down. If I could paint, I would paint for you a rose, patiently sitting on a  window sill somewhere in the city so that when the rain would die away a little, you could go out in your rain coat and boots with a telling smile and find it, because it would be meant for you. And you would, after searching and searching - a lot of searching - you'd find someone kind enough to open their apartment door and examine you strangely, then burst into a smile. And they'd tell you to walk right in and get what was rightfully yours. Have faith. There are people out there still. Meant for you and me.

Dear friend, there is a page in my notebook that tells me that you and I, we are life's little jars. That life will pour into us a mix of smiles and tears and cries and laughter and red roses and sunshine and it will pour it all in. In different proportions, at different times and different mixtures but we could all be the same size. Jars. And when I find a friend like you, I will pour some of my rainbow-coloured-life-in-a-jar in yours, and we will share and share to live. We will be okay.

I have a lot of hope still. I am infinitely grateful, I am infinitely blessed. And this time, dear friend, truly - I thank you for listening.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

Things have quietened down a bit for a moment, because there are no thumping sounds of hammers and bricks and drills hard at work outside in the summer breeze anymore. And I feel good again because I have been part of this Friday's colours and I have smiled and collected laughter in return. So I must write to you once more because I have been wondering far too much for me to be at peace, and I trust you to keep these thoughts safe for me.

There have been a lot of moments lately when I have found myself looking at what I have never seen before and listening to what I could not have imagined. And it frightens me for the most part because it is like being handed a new thread altogether, to untangle and make a pattern out of even though I am unfamiliar. I do admit that unfamiliarity makes me squirm, especially when I find it in people and things I've come to know by heart. And how it interferes with how I have painted them with colours and words and lingering images. Then there is distortion. But I must not be ungrateful. I have come to know that you and I, we are infinite. And that there will always be a lot to find, a lot to make sense out of, but that's okay. Because there will be so much more to find wonder in, and so much more to learn to love. And I will never grow tired.

Yesterday night had been silent so I'd been thinking. About April Letters. Because it sounds fascinating to me. April Letters. To hold a soft, brown parchment - the colour of Patience, and to read and to keep reading, in the light of the piercing sunshine by day, and beside a quiet lampshade in the evening. To read of Lady April, as she pulls in the summer heat behind her and stops at the sight of you at the window to smile at you, and how with a graceful wave of a hand, she reminds you that she cannot, she will not stay for long. Dear friend, I cannot cease to believe in beauty and you mustn't either. And if you'd like to, we will go looking for it to find us. In April and always; forever more.

I have something else to tell you, too. That I have found a lot of power in prayer. And while that may not sound too profound, I must tell you that I have felt like I am listened to. Incoherent as my prayers are, I have learnt to mean them and believe in them before they come pouring out on the prayer mat. I have learnt to believe that I will be given what I was meant to be given. And then they work. I may not get what I want but things happen for the better. And I am grateful. Maybe I just had to learn to believe in my own prayers. I do now. I feel at peace.

And I do not believe that life is unfair. God is good, because what I do not get, was never mine. You must understand that life hastens to bring good to other people too and there are so many people to take care of. You must understand and you must never lose hope. Your time will come when your time will come.There is a lot of justice still. The floor beneath my feet, the roof above my head. You and I, we're infinitely blessed.

Thank You for listening.

Love,
Me.