NaPoWriMo Day 3: My Sisterhood

Day 3 of NaPoWriMo and I’ve already decided to stray from the daily prompts. I’ve spent the day with some of the amazing women in my life, women I consider as my sisters, my family. I love these women so crazily. So this poem is for them.

My Sisterhood

I’ve written about this before–

Can there be words anymore?

I hear it in our silence,

And when we speak there need be no shyness.

I feel it around us;

When we’re together there is no fuss.

I love these girls,

They’re more valuable to me than pearls.

This is my sisterhood.

When I’m with them I know I am understood.

This is a love that I am lucky to know

And each time I think about it, I cannot help but say, “Woah…”

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Share your thoughts with me below, tell me about who you consider as your family.

Cleri-who?

Clerihew. [Pronounced kle-ri-yoo].

Definition: A witty, satiric verse containing two rhymed couplets and mentioning a famous person. Yeah, first time I’ve ever heard of it, too.

This NaPoWriMo thing has been really awesome–who knew there were so many weird and wonderful styles of poetry in the world? Certainly not me. I mean, I love poetry and all, and I’ve been writing poems since my very early days, but I’ve always just done my own thing, never really stuck to much structure. And I’ve certainly never learnt about clerihews, double dactyls or ekphrastic poetry in the classroom! But in this past month, I’ve learnt much about poetry and have tried interesting new styles of writing. Even though I haven’t been consistently active in participating in the poem-a-day aspect of National Poetry Writing Month, I’ve still been checking in on the website from time to time to see what the latest challenge is–and if I could meet it. So I’ve tried my hand at today’s challenge, which is to write a clerihew, and I want to share it with you…

Louis Tomlinson from One Direction

Had my students screaming from an infection.

Their mindless music is pathogenic,

It causes people to become schizophrenic.

I quite like this one. And the poem is based on true happenings, I might add–my students’ beahviour earlier this week was positively insane about this curly little guy (or maybe one of his other cronies, I can’t really be sure which one… I just grabbed any one of their names after googling them). It was utterly and ridiculously laughable. And sad. Very, very sad.

Anyway, this post is not about that. It is about poetry. And April. And April is just about coming to an end. But poetry shall never end! (Said in a voice filled with conviction). This month has felt really, really long, but wonderfully so. It has been a splendid month, I think. And not just because it was my birthday earlier this month (in fact, that plays a very small part in the greater scheme of things), but because of poetry, for one, and everything else in between, for another. Months are usually just months to me. Nothing special about them. It is days and moments that I usually cherish and reflect back on, but this past month has been something special to me. It has been a month of family and a month of friends. It has been a month of personal growth and of simple reminders leading to beautiful things. It has been a month of sad, harsh truths, and learning to accept them. All in all, it has been a month of people. I think I should write another poem, and title it An Ode to April… That is how passionate I feel about this month that has passed.

Farewell, dearest April. Do come again soon, even if by another name, for April, by any other name, would be as memorable.

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What did you love most about this month? Or what did you hate about it? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

Playing it Cool

I’m not cool.

There, I said it.

Most of the time, I’m a bundle of thoughts and emotions. I have all these things running through my head; thoughts I want to say out loud, but there’s a voice inside my head that keeps saying, Be cool. And then there are my emotions. Don’t care too much. Okay, you can’t help it if you care that much, but, for goodness sake, don’t let them know how much you care. Okay, cool it with hugs already! Don’t show that you’re upset. Don’t let them know you’re hurting. Don’t hug that hard. Don’t laugh that hard. Don’t love that hard… Just – play – it – cool.

It’s exhausting.

But, like I said, I’m not cool. So, I go ahead and I care a lot about things and people who matter to me, and I try to let them know it, because what’s the point in caring about someone if they never know they’re cared about? And I get upset, I get hurt; I hug hard and I laugh hard (though, still trying to maintain my lady-like, hijabi composure while doing it… uhem…). And… I love hard. Sometimes it ends up leading all the way back to getting hurt, but how do you stop yourself from loving without losing out on all the fun and most amazing parts of loving? And we can’t control how much we love someone–believe me, I have tried (when I was still naïve enough to believe that I could ‘play it cool’).

Sometimes, I still have that little voice in my head telling me to ‘play it cool’ in certain situations, but I shove it away, because, why would I want to play? This is not a game. Life does not have a scorecard keeping track of how hard I hug you in contrast to how hard you hug me back. If I love you, and if I missed you, I’m gonna hug you–and I mean really hug you! And you just better deal with it. And, in addition to giving suffocating hugs, I often say (really) silly things, and ask (really) silly questions. No, I mean, like, really silly. And, back when I was in high school, I used to keep them all in my head, wonder all these weird things only to myself, never letting my thoughts see the light of day. But, now, I’m a little more grown up and I understand a bit more about how the world works, and, with that, I’ve been blessed enough to have friends along the way who laugh at the silly things I say and the silly questions I ask, but love me anyway. And they’re kind of silly, too, so I laugh right back at them.

So, ultimately, I’ve come to learn that life is not about playing it cool. Life (or maybe just one small part of life) is about opening yourself up to being hurt and being laughed at, because that’s the only way you learn to feel, and the only way you learn to laugh at yourself. And I sure do enjoy a good, hard laugh at myself.

And, in conclusion, after all this talk about not playing it cool, I’m not going to play it cool and pretend that I don’t care how many people read this blog, and how many people comment on it. I WANT COMMENTS!! If I didn’t want people’s feedback on what I write, I’d open up a document in MS Word, type all this stuff in there, and save it in a folder on my laptop where I save all my other writings and poetry that I don’t particularly want to share with the world, because I don’t want people’s commentary and feedback on those pieces of myself. This blog, however, is designed for the purpose of people reading what I’ve written, and commenting on it.

So, I look forward to reading your comments 🙂

Saving Private Does-Not-Want-To-Be-Saved

Have you ever gotten it into your head before that you can save somebody? Have you ever believed that you were that special person who would rescue that friend that you cared and worried so much about? You would be the one to show your friend that there is hope, that there is a better way. You would inspire that friend and be the reason she wanted to be saved. You would save her. You.

Really? You? What makes you think you’re so special? What makes you think that all the bad decisions that person has made, all the wrong roads that person has taken, were by accident, and that she was just waiting for you to come along with your in-built GPS, directing her to the “right road“? What makes you think that you could be the road map to righteousness and reformation? Are you even righteous and reformed yourself? How ridiculously self-righteous of you.

We cannot change anyone. We cannot save anyone who a) does not want to be saved, and b)–much more obviously, and much more significantly–Allah does not want us to save. Everyone’s road is set out for them. It might be the wrong road for us to take on our journey, but it is precisely the right road for that traveller’s journey. Our understanding of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ may be slightly warped–or maybe only mine is. I used to believe in what-is-right-for-me-is-right-for-you. But it’s not. What is right for me may be right for you–some day. But not today. Today, I need to let you take your own road. Go your own way, travel your own journey. If we do not, ultimately, end up travelling the same road, I will know that I had at least told you about the road I was on, I had shown you some of the treasures I had found along the way–and that is all I can do. If you choose not to take the same road, that is your decision. And I cannot change it. No matter how much I wish for it.

So, go your way. May it lead to something great. And pray for me that my road, too, leads me to a beautiful destination. Ameen.

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Have you ever experienced (what I like to call) the Saviour Complex? Were you successful in your ‘mission’? Share your thoughts with me below.