Jan 25, 2021
With a folded face Papa wolfs down his breakfast and splits without saying a word, leaving Mama with the blues and the dirty dishes.
chapter 34
seen from Maldives
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Chile
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Austria
seen from France
With a folded face Papa wolfs down his breakfast and splits without saying a word, leaving Mama with the blues and the dirty dishes.
chapter 34
When the sun goes down, we’ll be staring at the city from the top of a mountain somewhere. It’ll look so small, like it can all fit in drop of water. Then we’ll lie down on the grass and watch the clouds turn to stars.
chapter 33
I squeeze his hand, and he does mine. For a moment, it feels enough—to have friends who believe you, despite the whole world. Even if everyone else calls us thieves and thugs, it will not be the only story told about us, because our friends will tell a different one, they will tell the truth. When we’re driven mad by what the world is making us to be, when it seems so much easier to just give in, our friends will remind us of that truth, that we don’t have to be what they believe us to be—we can be so much more.
chapter 31
I see printed on the first page of tomorrow’s newspaper a blurred, bloodied picture of my dead, abused bodies lying by the dumpster in the back of the mall.
chapter 28
He was holding her from behind. His hands were roaming all over her land—her hills, valleys, plains, and forests.
chapter 25
He may have destroyed my poetry book, but he can never destroy the source of those words: me. Even if he drowns my next book and the next one after that and so on, he will never stop me from writing.
chapter 21
School tells you that you are good or bad by what you wear and what you look like: if you wear your skirt under your knees or if you wear the hijab, then you’re good, but if you color your hair or have tattoos, or if you’re a boy and have long hair, then you’re bad. Morals, it seems, is all about clothes and appearances, not actions or behaviors.
chapter 13
This music is like that ball of words that got stuck in my throat now exploding in a burst of spit and screams, a grenade of long pent-up frustration and silence.
chapter 8