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Vladimir Mayakovsky, from a letter featured in "Love in the Heart of Everything; The Correspondence between Vladimir Mayakovsky & Lili Brik, 1915-1930,"

the world keeps moving all around me. i go outside and watch people buy in abundance, complain about traffic. i watch influencers sell us their latest makeup product, hair product, selfie light, stanley cup, starbucks order. the construct of whiteness has created two worlds. one where bombs fall somewhere far away and people think the greatest inconvenience is a boycott. and another world where we stay up to memorize faces under rubble, hold on to lines of poetry during the 100th day of bombing, and wait wait wait for a different ending to a very old story. i want no part in their world of comforts, in their life of escapism. how can i escape the orphaned child,a US bomb falling on him, signed off by my million luxuries. how can i continue looking people in the eye.

there is no pain like this. ya Allah liberate them. from gaza to khalil and from khalil to haifa. liberate them. from palestine to sudan. for each home lost give them a million more in jannah. ya Allah for each martyr grant them a borderless paradise. ya Allah grant them the goodness and safety of this life and the next.

God, i don’t want to be stagnant. in this same place next year. introduce me to me. help me to see myself the way that you see me. do whatever you need to do in my life that guides me closer to you. and my destiny. heal my heart so my triggers become my testimonies. add or remove whoever or whatever you need to help me grow spiritually. develop in me the character to not just reach the places we talk about but the character to stay in those places.

When you feel like you didn’t know you would survive for this long and have no idea what you are doing, remember that you are currently living in the Qadr of Allah. there is already a plan written for you and you are living in it so don’t worry about not having your own plan ready because:

“Allah is the best of planners”

[8:30]

learning to be my mother

O Allah, do not burden me with overthinking when You are the one who manages all affairs

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin

you, because no one else makes sense.