Aubade, Serenade.

I sing when I'm alone.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

It keeps catching me off guard how slowly truth unfolds and settles around me, what is is so different than what you imagine it to be, nobody prepares you, nobody can direct you, you cannot know until God quietly hands you a nugget of knowledge, like a trust between you and your intentions, but never from where you expect, from what you expect to know or find out. I find myself whirlwinded in pursuit of truth and love, and the sources from where it actually ends up flowing are simply divine and never something I could have crafted or built myself. I am learning humility in being at the mercy of this quiet unfolding life, that what remains with me is a prayer, a compass I offer to the skies, a song, my piano fingers at the altar, still kneeling, still bent, still shored up against the wall of all that is beautiful and holy about my God, at His will and the beginning and end of everything, and I hope to receive with grace, with trust, with intention, whatever is destined for me.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

I keep waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the future, of the turnstile moment where I will enter into life, the zing! of a linear commitment crafting up my life, setting it up for a careful descent into aging, relationships, family, love. I keep worrying that the turnstile is stuck, it won't churn open for me, the terror of being left behind, the fear of tangling up your life threads so haphazardly that the loose ends are hard to find, the breath that gets stuck in my hope, the splintered visions of my 30s, the agitated waywardness of staying afloat, of staying put, of staying in my courage, of staying --

I want to ask for love in the moments of aliveness rather than fear. I want to remember the flower somebody put in my hair and hold onto the happiness and peace of that moment and think of it as a seed. Maybe I am growing a tree, the ones that start bearing fruit over years, and I hope the taste is so sweet. I hope the sweetness comes even if it is excruciating to hope for. I hope to access the materiality of this big, beautiful world through my senseless belief that I deserve happiness. And it does feel senseless, but so have every single one of my other dreams until they have stretched out before me, and here I am, seeing the tree outside my window brush against the sky with gentle nods, that I did well. I keep listening, to the day, to its rhythms, to passing words and passing love, to ask for assurance, that it will be okay. Every time I ask, is it going to be worth it? Someone asks me to consider: hasn't it been worth it so far?

The future, like always, is a quest, but my history is evidence, that time blooms when it feels free. I do not have clarity, or knowledge, but I have blueprints and the heart of my desires: life, its bigness, and its capacity to hold all of me. I am learning to trust that there is a truth quality to hope, to courage, and to belief, that is a heavy, solid thing, that it is already solid ground, that I am still full in movement, and movement is life.

May my trees come true.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

My deepest aspirations for solidity materialize in the hallways of self-reflection, where we need assurance that we are one, singular, glowing, beautiful thing. The promise of solidity nested in identifications gives way to absolute vapour, when we realize that the flames have been burning for years, and will continue to do so. There is a fire ripping through the hallways, and in the dust, ruin, glory and burning, there is both life and archive, the truest antonyms for each other. If there's anything I have learnt about archives is that they are constituted by an unruliness that refuses single, catalogued entries in files and systems.

I am not, in fact, a solid thing. I am a compass - a direction of will, care, forgiveness and fire. Shapes, files, systems, and maps can be burnt, restored, reshaped, regimented into evidence, but as I continue to live, so will this directionless eruption of the capacity to be, in many ways, in many, flowing forms and visions. Everything can happen, everything will happen, it will come cascading down in storms and shelters, in big small rooms, in small big rooms, and I can hold the future like a promise, turning face to everything that grows and nurtures life and justice, the steadiness based in future rather than form, in hope rather than fear, in the possibility that things - that I - will be better.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

In this new apartment, perhaps new season of life, I am finding passing shadows and silences of old lives visiting me, but in a way that is stunning me more than scaring me, in a way that is grounding me, floating me more than drowning me. I am thinking of our old apartment in Dubai, where I made a fort and slept underneath that, the 3PM drawing of curtains after coming back home from school in Karachi and Hassan Bhai is watching television, the Fajr chorus in my window, the light streaming into my room, the quiet textures of peace on good days, where we were safe and loved. I feel like my entire life has come upto this moment, where I am recognizing strangely that this is exactly where I am meant to be. I feel at home, I feel at peace, my loneliness is a small suitcase that I keep in my cupboard but it has been bearable the past few days.

I keep saying, I haven't felt like this since I was a child. I feel like the past few years, in order to live, I have emptied out my vocabulary, words and languages to stay far away from something called home. But now, as I build a sense of safety around me, my past lives are coming back, the recurring characters of my old letters are now appearing and popping up again, maybe only as memories, but nonetheless, there, to be cherished and loved.

I hope whatever this feeling is, I'm able to hold on to it. As we heal, we are given the gifts of life as usual again and again, and it is so much work to be able to trust the peace. Maybe a cruel hand will come and tear it away -- but no, my hands are capable of fighting, too.

Hope is a thing with weathers, that's the poem we learnt. Hope is a thing with weathers, and I hope that there is flight, now, tomorrow, always.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

Love's mouth hangs over me, available, ripe and awaiting, and I am heartbroken at the unanswered calls, the reams of pain and longing strangling my heart on my way back, on the walk back home yesterday night, sobbing and panting with an excruciating desire to be loved, to be known, to be held. Howling in the night, I came back home, collapsed into my bed, and wolf-girled the portal to aliveness, to coming back sweetly and tenderly to life, to pick up the clothes, dishes, vacuum, play songs and write emails, wipe the dust and change my clothes, smooth out a day and night even in the face of a defeated, tired heartache.

The tenderness is a gift I will keep taking hungrily, from my God, from all that wants to bless me, from all that makes me feel wanted and safe, shifting my compass, slowly, hopefully, one day I will not feel perpetually nineteen in my desires, one day I will not be frozen in the memory of a great darkness, and my roving, searching heart for everything outside, everything adventure, everything that will sweep me into the order of things.

One day the graze of a hand will mean just that, and not make me convulse into time, tumbling backwards, backwards until I am rocking in my childhood bedroom, holding myself, trying to understand why I have to carry dreams in solitude. One day I will overcome the stickiness of solitude, and emerge, with the buzz of connection, intimacy, invitation, like it is finally something bearable.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

I feel lifted by a boyishness, lunging into my boots and world, throwing my hands into my jacket, tucking my back against walls, assuming stance, wide-legged, joy-eyed, made holy by urban histories, body in transition, escape and adventure, body-ful, peaceful shoulders, steady in mischief, streamlined by a practicality, like an arrow, like when a boy becomes an arrow, like when a girl becomes a boy, like when an arrow shoots towards its union, the puncture precise, special, and placed, the clean cut ontologically resistant towards disturbances, like I am whirring, full-tilt, shaded in the morning by a dream that could be true or couldn't, like you, like the lushness of possibility, still green, in the cradle of all that makes itself available for a dream to be dreamt, like a leap, like a crossed border, like being homed, like house when it feels like justice, like justice, like truth that becomes a movement, like a movement needs questions, like questions need those who ask them, like boys need boys and girls need girls, like girls who fought boys, like the rounded o's of this tumbling gender, like a jump, like the wideness of a field, and I am running, air borne, inventing the physics of natural laws, like an apple in reverse, more discovery than instrument, nectar-nourished-nourishing nexus, spinning like satellite, directed, direction, offered: as language, as love.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

I feel like this summer I trapped myself in a jar and carried myself around like a wounded bird. Will I forgive myself for running a blade through my wings? My friend today asked me for my anger but I had none. Crying in a Toronto-style Indian street food eatery, I stuffed my vada pav in the presence of a concerned friend who let me blabber out the pain. I feel injured, I said, and then the tears came.

Slowly, I am returning to myself. I notice and treasure the movements I make inside my home, slipping off my shoes, hanging my keys, locking the door behind me. There is something that has settled into my body, and there is the work of preservation. I keep thinking about fragments, the way we put together histories, and count on speculation and fantasy and desire to bring something to legibility. I am held together, like the archive, by fragile threads, that are prone to decay and damage.

My song reminded me that the truth empowers those who trust it. What a hard thing, logistically, intellectually, emotionally, to pursue truth and joy within structures that were not built for us. Increasingly, I am reminded of another well-wisher who told me many years ago -- it may seem like a choice, to choose survival, but in many ways, it is the only way out. To choose this not-choice, again and again, to prepare myself continuously for difficulty in the service of taking care of the life we are entrusted with -- it is proving to be hard work.

I keep writing to my friends that everything will be worth it. I hope it is. I hope, aged and grown, we are magnificent in how we have survived.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

I found my way back to you to explain to you that every strain of heartbreak opens up the world anew -- maybe less of an explanation, less pedantic, less pedagogical, this realization. More of a dawning reality that shakes my body into a new dimension of experiencing this life, this small life, I have built. And that has been built for me, that has been built with me. Things devastate me, and I imagine swimming underneath my blanket, sinking deep into the sea of hiding, terror, sadness and grief. And things uplift me, and I am reminded suddenly of the force of life swirling around in my stomach, bones, hands and words.

My body is an archive of movement, collected from all spaces I have loved. I hold a French fry over my mouth the way I remember a childhood friend did; when my earrings clink I think of my loved ones; when the spoon clatters against a cooking pot, I think of my mother. Hoards and hoards of movement that are suddenly activated upon chancing over something we once did, something we once loved.

I sink into someone's arms on a cold February day. I leave the door open for love, trying not to stare too hard at what will follow, or won't. I pretend to not look, but I'm always sneaking a look, sometimes heartbroken at when the arrival remains unannounced. And sometimes relieved, and sometimes forgetful. There is a world that sometimes swims between someone's eyes and mine. And sometimes we swat it away like a fly, sometimes we shuffle towards it, awkwardly, hands in pockets, eyes trained to ground, but moving forward.

And always this thought that follows me around -- what a privilege it must be to experience the devastation of searching for something on your own terms. This exhaustion, the grief and heartbreak that rattle my heart, this scream mulling around in my throat, this anguish, this mistrust, this excruciating hope against hope -- in many generations, this is mine to name, mine to make history with.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

For a while now, this letter has been beginning with a sentence in my head, knocking about at different times of the day: I wish I could write a lucid, clear treatise on love. This lucid, clear treatise on love would path my way to not only find my way to love, but also keep it, sustain it, never have it break or make me, just have it stored in a jar for me to gouge from on the happiest and saddest days. I know, however, this is a lousily-dreamed dream.

Being okay with telling yourself, "I don't have a plan." In many years, for the first time, I am now faced with the vast unpredictability of life that I cannot plan for. Variables have entered my life that will pan out in ways that I cannot control, nor expect -- I have to now adjust my expectations from life and grapple with each day as it comes. I don't have a plan for love and life and it is frightening, but I am trying to shift the compass of my hope to possibility and not fear.

What is also true is that not having a plan doesn't mean I don't put in the work required to live a life on my own terms. Staying with both open possibility and intention is a balancing act, and one that I'm learning to do. I wish I had years of knowing with clarity what lifts and keeps me thriving, but I have to set out and find out. I keep wondering about the merits of choosing movement - I look back to stable ground, to the shore, and it doesn't have home for me anymore. There is nowhere else to go but forward and I am afraid.

I hope I make my way, I hope that even as every bone in my tired body yearns for stable ground, I keep choosing my movement if that is where I am happiest.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

Sometimes I wonder where to locate the truth of our lives: is it in the alleyway that leads to my apartment, where I sometimes return with skipping steps, sometimes with a heavy head, sometimes in a rush before the next thing unfolds for the day? Is it in the arms of friends, in their company on a picnic blanket on a perfect summer day, and the wind is kind and the sky is available for inspection, and we are laughing and yelling and howling in love? Is it in the nights we spend alone, trying to rake out textures and threads of another life, another home, that sometimes gets caught up in our breath, our old ways and rooms, the sounds of doors closing and locking, objects and words that suddenly come up as a surprise thought that I thought I had forgotten?

The easy answer is that life and truth is everything, but the harder answer is that some coordinates of time and place, more than others, shape our futures and days to come -- the loneliness of a life still in construction, its fragility, emptiness, the work it requires every day, a faith in a future you can't yet see, a faith in a stability that can be worked towards, piecemeal. It's a lot of work to renew our confidence in the life and decisions we have made for ourselves, and of course we falter. And sometimes I don't want to offer any balm to the faltering -- faltering is faltering is faltering. Mistakes and pain and the complications of a heart in search for life and sustenance -- everything feels so big sometimes and that is that. Sometimes error feels non-cumulative, just a glitch in the system that I don't always learn from, and it is just grime and goo we scrub off.

The love I've fought hardest for is the one I have for myself. I am grateful for the kindness I have learnt to give to me, that has room for all the grime and goo also. Most days, I am stunned at the gift of this life, most days I am sinking, teeth-deep in memory, the voice of mother, father, siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, resting heavy on my shoulder. Together, this is life for now.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

Feeling desire through its hell threat, Gibby says. Sometimes I take refuge in movement so much because on the other side, there is stillness, and stillness is nothing but ourselves. What has happened, and what will -- a Herculean task, I feel, is to let go of a dream someone else has for you. As we grow, we have to configure the coordinates of our pedestals differently. Someone else has to be whom I work towards in life for, someone else has to be the centre of my world, someone else has to be my commitment, and I am frightened that sometimes it has to be ourselves.

Growing pains -- I loaded all the furniture I owned into a truck and moved into my own place, a small basement I am settling into. To examine yourself as a specimen, to keep an eye towards where your heart lurches and falls, to stroke my own skin with kindness when I am in devastation - I am learning everything.

To be honest, I am devastated more than anything else in the face of pursuing desire. There is a heartbreak from what life could not be, there are ghost limbs of all the girls I couldn't be, all the ghost limbs that move swiftly between rooms and bow their heads and balance trays and keep everyone laughing. Ghost limbs of happy houses, happy homes, where the sun rises and sets in a clock set to conformity. Ghost limbs of a bride and her dress, of the songs she would sing, of every song that would be sung back to her.

I am haunted by these many girls inside of me, but I am keeping an eye out for the ones that crawl out of bed on the most difficult days, dream of joy and grab a snack, walk to the river and walk and walk, and walk and keep a photograph of her shoes because just for the record, ghosts love to wander, and remember one of those girls, at 17, one time walked out of City School with a trophy she didn't quite know how she won, and some boy walked upto her and said shyly, big smile in the dark, I am a big fan of your writing, and another kid walked her to her car, everyone a little bit awestruck by her just as much she was awestruck by herself.

May I be awestruck by myself time and time again.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

I feel like I am fifteen and nineteen and twenty again -- a recent therapy session brought to the fore miles and miles of grief that I am also slightly amused by. It feels so strange to be fifteen again, sounding old songs, memories and voices in my brand new room, brand for the century, brand new country, new body, who this. Old letters remind me how painfully lovely everything was when it was slowly acquiring meaning. Now I dribble maple syrup on French toast that I bought on my own like it's nothing. Roll up a window like it's nothing, see the fall leaves strewn around in the yard and stop for a moment to remember how beautiful it looks - and then nothing.

If you think about it, pain is such a strange sensation, its viscose running deep and wild, the surprising depths of what we can feel and experience. The unruly depths, the ones that keep descending, and it gets scary, and someone calls it rock bottom, and how much it hurts. It runs deep and sometimes without purpose and that's what terrifies me sometimes -- the purposelessness of having a deep hurt run deeper, to have yourself know a depth of pain, physical or otherwise, that doesn't really serve anything other than knowing how severe it can be.

So what does pain teach us? Sometimes it feels like a party trick, a stringent beauty that life reveals, a life-changing smirk, beautiful just because she can be. And don't get me wrong, it might not feel beautiful, and it doesn't, but isn't it? Lush and loose, gory, terrible, high-pitched, no room for laughter or light. And then slowly it lifts, crossing the bridge to other, more manageable side of life -- just days.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

The utmost humility I learn is from stories; from the assemblage of life offered to me from mouth of strangers, friends, loved ones. Again and again, I am reminded of the wide acres of life: I recently met a woman who told me stories about herself in helicopters, villages, in remote parts of North America. I was floored because there is a version of life where I can acquire the circumstances to say those things with ease. I can almost hear myself recounting my pursuit of livelihood and life. I can almost hear myself recounting a home of my own. I can almost hear myself making choices and decisions about brick wall exteriors.

I learn to tune my voice from the hammer and the nails and the screws that stories give me. I hear life; and I hear myself. I feel like for the first time in my life, my own voice is louder than any of those in my heart and my head. And I am so grateful for this lesson: life is not only what is done to me -- it is also done by me, my favourite colours, bright and beautiful, imprinted on the world.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

One of the most important things I've learnt over the past year is that the darkest corners of shame and humiliation that my mind retreats to are just that: corners. There is plenty of other space for light to fill, even if it doesn't always reach the dusty and the decrepit. I live my life in the expanse, and sometimes when my body resorts to hiding and looking and attaching itself to places where the light doesn't reach, I am learning to recognize it as an opportunity to be patient with myself, and give myself time to step out and bask in the joy of what I have been gifted with: life, friends, love.

I'm finding myself often on the verge of tears these days: from love -- my niece came up to me and asked me if she should make me a sandwich since I didn't have dinner with everyone and I held her and almost cried. From pain -- I don't want my loved ones to suffer but they do and my wanting doesn't stop that, of course. So I sit miles away not running away from the parts of my heart that are tormented by the idea of my loved ones in Karachi dealing with the aftermath of someone's unfair, unjust, unwarranted violence. From happiness -- I saw my best friend after three years and had my first sleepover with her and we tried to cover all the important things in the expanse of a few hours' worth of conversation.

I am more sure of myself now, but now that more of myself is in view, there is more to confront and to tolerate. I'm learning to be gentle with everything that is not perfect, I'm learning to be gentle with the small moments of failure, I'm learning that crafting love, for yourself or for anyone, is profound gentleness with what doesn't harm but doesn't bloom either -- the vulnerable middles, that come from the mouth of life, dribbling, unphotographable, mundane and just there. Morning breath, not my best tea, lack of energy on a beautiful day, not knowing what to cook, the dip or rise of voice without grace, itchy skin, losing the screw before assembling a piece of furniture. All of it, the small middles, not made of harm or goodness, just there. And we have to take in all of it, in service of home.

Most of all, I am praying to never experience the unhappiness that comes with forgoing joy in the name of duty, in service of a structure. I want to tell everyone that just because you have made your peace with the unhappiness of life that you can't call your own, doesn't mean I have to. To hell with bravery, my friend said. And I agree. I am saving my bravery for the uncertain waters of living life on one's own terms. I don't want to be brave for structures that will never value my bravery.

I want to be brave for my loved ones, who have nurtured me over the years, who have loved me in every way possible, who show me the meaning of unconditional love, the one that is not bound by bodily scripts, where we free-write and meditate upon futures like it is a sky we can scribble over, in their arms, shoulders, homes and sofas, where I rest and sing and laugh. I want to be brave to be with them, always.

Love,

Me.

[imwideawakeatthreeoclock]

Dear friend,

Someone said that trauma makes you feel unsafe inside your own body. I want to feel safe and at ease, I want to smoothen out the future with my bare hands, I want so desperately to build a liveable life. I keep panicking, bruising my heart against voices and faces and pictures, but I have to remember that people are people before they are pieces of a perfect puzzle. I feel dizzy in my desire for security, to come home to myself as I am, and I want the split of my life to heal. I want oneness over splitting, I am very tired of hosting and hoarding pieces, I am very tired of imploding parts of myself so others can stay safe. I want everything to be whole.

I want, I want, I want -- it's so terribly scary to want everything at once, pleasure and purpose, the monstrosity that lives alive and well under our skin and the gentle parts that are committed to nurture. I am trying to remind myself that even though time feels heavy, it can be spaced out between days where I just want to exist in stillness, and that I am allowed to say no to what I do not want. Sometimes the no feels impossible, but I have to remind myself the difference between feeling and capability. I am allowed my life. I am allowed a life. I am, I am, I want, I want -- sometimes I want to stop fighting and fall into the abyss of traditions.

But I keep hearing myself say, "I'll find a way." I know I will, I know myself well enough to be assured that I will find courage when I need to. The road just feels exhausting, and sometimes I wish for stillness and peace. I hope there is a bend in the road coming that leads me to a place I can call home.

Love,

Me.