Late summer postcard

Nour/22

[noureverie]

I saw you in a dream

you came to me

you were the sweetest apparition 

such a pretty vision

[erotisation]

good morning miserable women with mental problems

[ritikajyala]

My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here

[noureverie]

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

[awoundstillfresh-deactivated202]

Wounded Daughter

[noureverie]

When I get off the train, she calls to ask if I’ve reached safely. I don’t interest my mother, my heart told me. She doesn’t ask about the things I saw on my way, what my thoughts were about, what I did with my uneasy hands and my racing mind. She sees me upset but fails to see I’m longing for her to ask me why. I feel she sees me that way and thinks this is how my daughter has been her whole life. 

I booked an early train once. She never suspected something must be wrong. I cried the whole journey but she never asked. My hands dug into the skin on my thigh but that never came up. I reached safely, I told her. 

“I was screaming and screaming and screaming and my mother never even bothered to look at me”

[noureverie]

I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.

──Franz Kafka/ Letters to Milena

and I don’t wanna talk about anything

I don’t wanna talk about anything

I wanna kiss, kiss your eyes again 

wanna witness your eyes looking 

I don’t wanna talk about anyone 

I don’t wanna talk about anyone 

I wanna sleep in your car while you’re driving

 lay in your lap when I’m crying

──Adrienne Lenker/ Anything

[noureverie]

Privileged women in the corporate world refusing to hold meaningful conversations about systemic sexism and institutional inequality, and going as far as refusing to address the very relevance of these issues in order to avoid controversy in their domains is extremely disappointing and damaging to younger women in particular. The inability to talk about it and consequently build momentum over it contributes to the problem, and this will not be reversed by employing superficial approaches such as tokenism and events decorated with 'girl boss' banners and 'empower women' placards emptily strewn around.

This approach also helps hold up a pattern where men can easily incorporate these broad surface level terms into their vocabulary to feign allyship, get away with ignorance, and create an environment where they’re not held accountable.

[rosymoonfaery]

- Clementine von Radics

[noureverie]

This speaks to my soul and leaves me crying. It makes me feel like a tiny tiny part of my inexplainable inkling of feeling like a half alive body of nothingness has been pinned down and understood. 

[noureverie]

Garden Room by The White Room

https://www.dwell.com/article/garden-room-the-white-room-b7685215 

[noureverie]

You know when you find a good song and you don’t know what to do with it except that you want to take it everywhere? You want to take it to the car and listen to it at midnight as you drive through a tunnel, you want to listen to it on a field in a country you’ve never been to, you want to take it as you walk to see the sunset. I think that’s what you feel like when you find love. You want to take it everywhere.

“There’s a place I want to take you. When the train comes, I will hold you”

[noureverie]

I wonder if someone drove to the library for a book that I’ve borrowed and left let down after learning it’s not available. I wish I could call them home and flip the pages for them. Maybe take them out for a drive and talk about all the things I forget to talk about. I crave for someone I can confide in who will understand, truly, all the words I can't say.

[oliviacirce]

“After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, Please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she Did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, Sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used— She stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and Would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and Found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering Questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag— And was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers— Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands— Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped —has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. 

[noureverie]

I WILL, FROM HERE ON, LIVE FOR THIS POST AND THE INTENSE MIX OF HOPE AND BLISS IT GIVES ME

[noureverie]

New Year's eve was wholesome. My favourite thing ever is the crowd that gathers in random spots across the city to watch the fireworks. Every year a new crowd, and we just move on with this shared moment in our lives? and we probably run into some of those people who may be dining at the same restaurant as us, maybe a pedestrian we give way to, maybe they catch the same flight as us and we'll just never know but we have this moment we once shared, excited, together. God, I lovee.

[noureverie]

I feel as though my potential is a lie. Maybe there is no potential. This is it, this gripping feeling of being lost. I got lost on my way home today. I cried in the car. I believed I'd find my way back home and I did. I cried because I didn't know how I got there. I can't wait to cry in the comfort of my bed tonight. An imaginary hand stroking my hair as I sob into my pillow.

I've been feeling empty when I return after a day of meeting someone. Am I real? Am I here?