#ValentinesDayIsHaraam

Roses are red, violets are blue,
You need to do wudhu.
Because you stink.
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I dream about you every night...
When I forget to recite Ayatul Kursi to ward off Shaytan.
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Roses are red, violets are blue,
Shaytaan disgusts me
And you do, too.
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Whenever I see you, I lower my gaze
Because you're ugly and I don't want to do dhulm on myself.
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Did you fall from Jannah?
Because boy, you look like Iblees.
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I love you like Salafis love the Mawlid.
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I love you like a Sufi loves reading Kitaab at-Tawheed.
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I love you like a Sufi loves the three categories of Tawheed.
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I love you like Jamaatis love cleaning up after themselves at a masjid.
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I love you like desi aunties love hearing that their beti is going to marry a Black Muslim man.
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I love you like Khaleejis love hearing that their beloved eldest son is marrying a desi girl.
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I love you like converts love telling their conversion story to random strangers at the masjid.
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I love you like Muslims love being "randomly selected" by airport security.
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I love you like proggies love traditional Islamic scholarship on hijab, gender and sexuality.
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I love you like masjid boards love having transparent, non-corrupt elections.
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I love you like Madkhalis love hearing criticism of the Saudi government.
...

The Shards of Motherhood

Over the last year, I have finally been slipping into motherhood proper, the term feeling less awkward, my heart feeling surer about itself, aware of my child and attuned in a way that I had struggled to achieve for years.

It is a relief to feel this; I no longer feel fraudulent when declaring my maternal relationship to the bright-eyed, startlingly sarcastic girl whom most assume to be my younger sister.

And yet.

And yet, these days, even as I am more fiercely dedicated to doing motherhood right, even as I feel the tug of her flesh and blood to my own, I struggle.

I struggle with my own memories, my own shame, with the panic and fear and pain that swamped the earliest days of her existence and lasted for years later, clouding my heart and my mind.

I flinch at the memories of my own selfishness, of the overwhelming loss of myself, of the strangeness that I felt between her tiny body and my own. I feel sick, often, remembering the twisting of my womb, of how horrified I was at what grew within me. I feel even more sick remembering who I was after she was born, of my weakness, of the tears she wiped away with toddler hands, of the emptiness I felt in place of maternal instinct, of my sharp words borne of frustration at her very existence.

I hate remembering my own thoughtlessness, and worse still, the lack of remembrance of most of her earliest years. I cannot remember the day she first called out for me clearly, or what she looked like fresh out of the bath. I look through pictures of her, often, and desperately grasp at wisps of recollection, unsure of what is true maternal memory and what is a clumsily constructed history.

I am ashamed of who I was, of whom I have been for so long.

It is hard not to want to undo it all, to take it all back, to create a better story of motherhood than the lopsided, rough pieces I hold within me now.

She deserves better, I tell myself, but uneasily, I wonder if I mean that *I* deserved better. I don't know if I will ever know the real answer to either thought.

For now, I try to swallow back the shards of past memories, and curl my fingers around the softer memories that I have created today.

Fog

Some days, I wake with fire in my bones and on my tongue, words crackling like sparks ready to burst into flame, and revolution is at my fingertips.

Some days, I wake and find my words smothered and muffled, wrapped in a fog that I struggle to make sense of. My words feel trapped, hidden somewhere that I cannot reach; the embers inside me have gone cold, and my fingers are clumsy, stilled by the frost that has leached into my mind.

These are the days that I reach out blindly and greedily seek others' words instead, desperate for second-hand heat, hoping that I will find tinder and kindling to set me ablaze once more.

I miss my own words. I don't know where to find them, or how. The fog is too thick, and I am too tired to burn it away.