بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

It's curious: 

When I'm not talking with a potential for marriage, then it's as if I'm in the middle of a vast desert with the sun overhead and nothing around for miles..slowly being baked by the heat and dryness. 

When I am talking with a potential, then it's as if I'm in the middle of a vast ocean, potentially with a lifeboat or barely floating I can't always tell..yet saltwater all around me and still possible it seems to die of thirst.

Hah. What a beautiful dichotomy. Shade and fresh water. The basic necessities any nomad is always looking out for in this life. Where art thou? 

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

(original lyrics courtesy of em, transposed for the love of what He let me find)

الى الله 

(To Allah) 

I can't tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like, and right now it's a beam of light shining inside my every darkness. I can breathe deep, no fear of loneliness, no fear of being overcome by lust, no fear of losing me in midst of all my senses. the devil hasn't won, neither has he lost, he'll still come for my soul, at any time and any cost. but every day is one I fight while He helps me fight, when He's made the wrong weaker than the right. this moment's sanctuary feels like I'm in flight, unafraid of distance, or absence, or loss, or a road that just tends to feel so endless. may He never let me drown, may He always keep me afloat, may He always have my back, when there's little I can show. I have been, am now, hope to always be: a slave of His, that He kept with Him as always free, ameen

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Somethings always on the mind, might be the hat on my head, keeping it warm, sometimes close to overheating, so now and then thoughts escape, finding refuge in the paper and pen. At times looking ahead so long, might forget there's a present in front of the eyes, but every time I try to give it attention, today fades into black like it was empty space from start to end. Am I the only one who doesn't find belonging to this life? Are these temporal callings so endearing to people, are the things we can see with our eyes so wonderful, that it's just all they can clamor for? There's a reason this place is called the lowest sky, the basest heaven, nothing here lasts while we carry forward only the deeds we've done. My solace, my Garden, so far yet its echoes reach me in the midst of all these unknowns, alas I can't begrudge my Rabb as my friend, I just wish I understood the road ahead in this mortal abode. 

If I found this life but full of drought, all around vanity and emptiness, mirages of what could be but quite wasn't,  I wouldn't mind one bit if just the end I find was the end He gifts: layers upon layers of blessings, pleasures and joy in every breath, but of my most cherished as-yet-unmade memories: hand in hand as we walk through those Gates, as I show her what forever ever after truly means. 

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Without question, I've been laden with blessings, from the moment of conception to this moment I'm writing. Why do some absences ring so loudly in silence? Why do some needs overpower common sense? It's something I'm missing, not a replica of future hope based on a past template, but just enough company for the present. An idealist with no one to embrace, no one to bring into his mindscape, this place too vast for one alone to stay. And so at times I cannot feel that ideal, cannot tell what is its flavor, while this life has me in its grip, and I must choose sanity over being made even crazier. Openness and trust, honesty and depth, these aren't such hard things to comprehend, for villains or heros or persons yet indeterminate, it's simplicity garbed in its finest attire, the best parts of a world where by the physical we're all mired. I don't know how often I can keep reaching for another's heart, how many times to that guessing game I can remain open and willing, the move isn't quite mine to make, maybe just remain patient as I know precious little of who's best for me on this journey to take. At the end of these conclusions, there's still Tomorrow always beckoning, just out of reach, a promise from Him I seek to brighten skies forever with my beacons. 

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Stardate 1021.1 AJ (After Judgment)

It was a strange conception to still hold, time, a relic from bygone ages. When neither death nor loss held sway, time tended to lose its meaning. Every second was a gift being opened, a gift without fear of loss or taint. But creatures of schedules and frames of reference humans still were, so even in eternity he liked to keep track of how long it had been. 

Judgment was by far the most harrowing moment of his existence he'd ever known. To call it a 'moment', as if it were a trifle amidst the endless eons now spread before him...seemed somewhat of an understatement. The Day itself encompassed more millennia than he dared count. Such consuming fear, such pounding of the earth, the sky, the cavity inside his chest. Were he not surrounded by the mercy of his Lord, the mere recollection would cause him to tremble. But that was what saved him then, that was what kept hold of him still. The mercy of his Rabb. Of his past life, his flaws were not blind to him, his mistakes and shortcomings often strikingly apparent. If he had been let go of for a microsecond, for the fraction of the blinking of an eye, then he'd reduce himself to dust and vanish in a puff of self-destructed smoke. But Allah kept him. Despite the logic of it he could not fathom, despite the purposes that escaped him, despite the density of the struggle past which he could not see. He was kept. A simple, straightforward notion. But, by his Lord's grace, it sufficed. 

And in this sufficiency is where he found his match. How to describe in words what transcended speech? It could not be done. Approximations had to be found for the glance that became a series of gazes held, for the touch that became a shower of sparks cascading through every inch of his being. A mirror for him in her, a mirror for her in him, each themselves in the other always seeing, not for a love of self or a thing self-defeating, but of a hope brought eternally close, of what they themselves had always been seeking. 

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Once a slave, always a slave. For me, this goes to Allah, as it ever has. The only thing I have to give is submission, continually, regardless of circumstances, regardless of what I did or didn't pour into something. He owns it, just as He owns me. I can't say if there is any 'happiness' in revisiting this notion, in accepting it again, but there is definitely the rightness of it. After all, it's the only recourse for an 'abd. Which person would dare rebel openly and continually against the King of the heavens and the earth? Not i, for me is just those scattered moments where my feeble internal notions rise up, only to be quelled soon after. 

Of some events that happen, I hate them at my core, but there's nothing there for me, nothing from this life to be taken except to remind myself that I am His and that's it. Wishes and wants, even hopes and dreams, all fade into the background, all have to fade. For me, what's mine, is simply the inescapable knowledge that I am my Rabb's creation, that I will be brought back to Him and judged. Oh Allah, forgive me.  

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Fateful decisions fall from the heavens, comets lighting up the night sky, I am but earth, cratered and cracked as long as there is life. I endure without patience, fight without fist, seethe without fury, scream without sound, effortlessly ineffectual, the sum of a man's import, as he's turned back into dust of which he's bred. My Rabb, to Him I have no pleas, no needs, nothing there for me to find but retreat. Shallow graves are best, easiest to dig, no, not my own, but those of what He tests me with. Soon I shall join them, as a being who once lived, soon breath will escape, and lungs cease life to give. There's no grief for he who hoped and fell, such is what humans are, seeking to rise they simply trip and fall. May any who still linger take upon their shoulders, the banner of the struggling hopeful ones, and make their way to their Creator, before dust settles on their shoulders too. 

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

framed

Of all the colors she could have chosen, of all the things she could have changed, she went with the color red, with a smile slight but amazing, it was for her the perfect shade. In the midst of every drought in life I find, while from no other places can emotion seep, when in every other way am I imprisoned, this gift of hers He lets me hold, in which I’m always free.

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

Red is the color I will always bleed, what flows through my veins, though it may have not have touched the air outside, still Red is what it turns, for being colored so is part of what I mean. Life brings its oscillations, its twins of joy and pain, sorrow and elation, but when I tire of the swinging to and fro', I need but look at what is my self within, to be steadied by Tomorrow. With this ink, I can paint what I've never seen, what I've never fathomed, what only my conscious mind dares to dream, as salve and hope mixed into one same colored-Red pigment. How does the thinker reach across time, soar across space, settle into one faraway mind, and tell what became, of a heart the dreamer saved? We were never alone, our selves were not the guide, it was but Allah Who paved for us the road, from the very start 'til the finish line. I hope she smiles still, enjoying the bright and whimsical, reaching ever towards that Sky, for what awaits her but wings, so she too may fly.