Dazed Hymns ~ Inheritance and Fluid Stream
May arrives with tears, the way my grandmother's May always did—orange blossoms mixed with tear gas, sweetness and burning. Sheep ahh to cure what the old women knew needed no curing, only witnessing. Pata spak ee aye—my mother's nonsense words when words failed her, when heritage wasn't safe, when silence grew teeth.
Time folds here like my aunt folding phyllo dough, Day von on another lay lay, each layer thin enough to see through, holding yesterday's butter, tomorrow's honey. Maybe we should let you come in, though you've been here since before the house was built, since before the house was taken, since before we learned to build houses in our chests.
Breathe in every word the way we breathed in jasmine and dust, revolution and resignation. Show us your kindness—we can't find it in the places our mothers looked: not in papers that prove belonging, not in keys to doors that no longer exist. Only in the space between habibi and exile, where the ocean changed from blue to the color of leaving.
I wish we knew exactly when we are going to be falling, but my family has been falling for seventy years and we've learned to call it flying. A little more time and you will for sure believe what our bones already archive: that we learned to take without having to touch the surface of those goods, like inheriting grief through breast milk, like swallowing a country through lullabies.
Come back, come back, every mother's song to her scattered children. From distant cities, from the edges of maps that keep changing. Maybe I should let you call me something that's haunted both of us—ya binti, daughter of daughters of leaving.
Step into our world where the pig is not a cow—obvious truths my father recited like protection. Why do you need such a big house when we've learned to carry home in the curve of our spines? The walls can't contain what was never meant to be contained: the smell of coffee with cardamom, the sound of a language forgetting itself.
Slow down, slow down, says the border guard, says the heart monitor, says time to the body that remembers running. Turn everything into something to materialize—passport, deed, proof that we were here. But matter is just memory moving too slowly to escape itself.
Drink the nectar of forgetting—it tastes like tea with too much sugar, like lying to children about why we left. Eat the seas dance with the sun, the way Mediterranean light falls different on skin that's learned to be foreign. You sat on my feelings like they were plastic-covered furniture in the formal sitting room no one uses. You walked on my emotions like they were my mother's good carpets, the ones we weren't allowed to step on.
Tell us now so we know which stories are true: the one where we return, or the one where return becomes a story we tell. There are so many things to say but only one mouth, which is why we taught our children to speak with their hands, their hips, their way of standing in doorways.
Believe me, we need you everyday like olive trees need drought to make their fruit sweet. Please stay, even though staying is what we couldn't do, even though leaving became our only verb.
Once on my face during a dance—fingers traced the map of villages that no longer exist. Let's now rearrange all of the things that we have that are strange: Spoon (for feeding ourselves the past), Bangs (for hiding eyes that look too much like home), Surveillance (for watching ourselves disappear), and Rain (for pretending it's not tears).
You so clear let's disappear for a few days to the countryside that isn't ours anymore, where fig trees remember our names even if the land registry doesn't. Lines as wrinkles on the bodies of living elders—my grandmother's face, each line a border crossing, each wrinkle a year of waiting to return.
Familiar before now Summer's pain, the kind that smells like thyme and sounds like house keys on a chain around an old woman's neck. We can't hear it even though we try, the way our heritage sounds different in our children's mouths, accent slipping like soap.
Take us back without a fight to when we believed in directions, before we learned that forward and back are the same when you're circling. Rye and rice, what we ate when we couldn't find bulgur, when the stores didn't stock our hunger.
White skin that isn't white but isn't brown enough either, Lilly fine uneven teeth like borders drawn by foreigners. Living and growing with cycles and moods swings—the way homesickness comes in waves, some days drowning, some days just wet feet.
Move on, they said, as if grief were a neighborhood you could leave. Set your souls at ease, impossible when souls are passports to places that exist only in recipes now. Lay down your head and wait for what—for return? For forgetting? For the moment when exile feels like choice?
That far away road leads to the sky, or to a checkpoint, or to another cousin's wedding where we'll dance like we're not broken. Watch the world land into open arms that learned to hold distance.
They were old songs our mothers hummed while cooking, sweet little birds on the backs of butterflies, carrying impossible weight—like memory, like homeland, like the word for home on a foreign tongue. He was not tied to anyone because the rope was cut in 1948, 1967, yesterday, tomorrow.
When they were silk they were dolphins filled with now—before we were refugees we were farmers, we were dancers, we were. It could be a stone covered with wine stained soft tissue organs, which is how my mother described her heart after the fifth displacement.
When we were little we were caught unaware, napping in the brightness of possibilities before we learned that some possibilities have walls. The warm embrace of soup line servers—no, of aunties ladling lentil soup like it could heal history.
Life goes on and on, the way stories do when no one writes them down, only passes them mouth to mouth like shared bread. Nothing should go wrong as long as our heads are above water, but what about when the sea is made of other people's words for what we are?
We have to know that we have lost some of our memories for the moment—stored them in the jewelry we sold, in the photos we couldn't carry, in the names we changed to cross borders. Still we can go ahead and volunteer to tear down walls that divide, knowing that some walls live inside us now.
At the edge of a stage where performance meets survival, countless miles closer to a home that exists in the space between here and there, between the language they made us learn and the one we made our children forget.
Everything connects because everything is already connected by the thread of leaving, by the way cumin smells the same in every kitchen but tastes like different countries. Come back from the edge of the stage where you've been performing belonging. Come back to the center where all our mothers are making coffee, reading grounds, seeing futures in the darkness that settles.
The hymns are dazed because they're sung in languages we're forgetting. The dolphins still silk in the sea we can't return to. The heart still a house too big for its foundation but standing anyway—like us, like all of us who build homes in the space between I swear and truly, between what was taken and what we took with us.
Countless miles closer to understanding that distance is measured not in kilometers but in generations, not in maps but in the way my daughter says familiar words like they're foreign, like they're not the sound of every beginning we've ever known.
Dazed Hymns ~ Fluid Stream
May arrives with tears because seasons know how to grieve properly. Sheep ahh to cure what counting cannot heal—Pata spak ee aye, the language before language knew it was broken. Day von on another lay lay, time folding like origami cranes that refuse to fly straight.
Maybe we should let you come in, though the door is already open and you've been here all along. Breathe in every word until words become breath, until breath becomes the thing we've been trying to say. Show us your kindness because we can't find it in the obvious places—not in mirrors, not in wallets, only in the space between heartbeats where God changed the ocean from water to longing.
I wish we knew exactly when we are going to be falling, but falling requires not knowing—that's the spiritual physics of it. A little more time and you will for sure believe what your bones already know: that we learned to take without having to touch the surface of those goods, like drinking light through closed eyelids.
Breathe every passage as if hallways could teach us how to arrive. Come back, come back from wherever you go when you're already here. Maybe I should let you call me something that's haunted both of us—a name that tastes like yesterday's rain and tomorrow's drought.
Don't hold back what's already spilling. Step into our world where the rules work backwards: the pig is not a cow, obviously, but neither is the cow what we thought. Why do you need such a big house when your heart is already too large for your body? The walls can't contain what was never meant to be contained.
Slow down, slow down, says the universe while spinning faster. Turn everything into something to materialize, but remember: matter is just light moving too slowly to escape itself. Come back Sister, come back from the edge of understanding where you've been translating silence into sound.
Drink the nectar of confusion—it's sweeter than certainty. Eat the seas dance with the sun because somewhere, water learned to tango with fire and nobody thought to tell them it was impossible. You sat on my feelings like they were furniture, walked on my emotions like they were floors, but feelings aren't meant to support weight—they're meant to float.
Pick it up, whatever you dropped, even if it's intangible. Starry eyes see what regular eyes miss: that constellations are just connect-the-dots for adults who forgot how to play. Tell us now so we know which stories are true and which truths are just stories waiting to be told. There are so many things to say but only one mouth, which is why we invented music.
Tell us now exactly what to take in: oxygen or light or the sound of someone almost remembering your name. Believe me, we need you everyday like plants need darkness—not just the sun but the pause between photons. Please stay, even though staying and leaving are the same motion viewed from different directions.
Guess our voice can't show which one of you is the echo passing through, because in the physics of the heart, we're all echoes of the first sound ever made. Once on my face during a tango fingers traced the map to nowhere, proving that skin remembers what minds forget.
Let's now rearrange all of the things that we have that are strange: Spoon (for feeding ourselves illusions), Bangs (for hiding third eyes), Surveillance (for watching ourselves not change), and Rain (for washing away what was never dirty). Middle eye tried to seek you but kept finding itself—that's the cosmic joke of searching.
There's always a beginning just as there is never an end; circles don't have edges, they have agreements to keep going. You so clear let's disappear for a few days to the countryside where silence has texture and time moves like honey. Lines as wrinkles on the bodies of living saints is no joke—each crease a scripture written by living.
( surf electric guitar lick goes here )—because some truths can only be played, not spoken.
Familiar before now Summer's pain, the kind that arrives before the season, prophet-pain that knows what August will bring. They are written notations that float on air like sheet music for breathing. We can't hear it even though we try, because trying creates static and the message requires stillness.
You want it to be great, so bad that wanting becomes its own gravity. We see mysterious moving shadows in your father's eyes—inheritance is more than money, it's the way we hold our faces when we think no one's looking. Take us back without a fight to when we believed in forward as a direction.
Rye and rice, simple grains before we complicated nourishment. There are jump me dogs (surprise anxiety) and forget me nots (persistent memory), nice how nature names itself honestly. Feeling goat to plan a trip to salty cove makes perfect sense if you've ever been a goat or felt like one. She fraught from sick me necktie—clothing as illness, fashion as symptom. Bounty gave us cold lips, Brrr, because abundance doesn't always warm.
Fruit hair eyeless fate sounds like nonsense until you've seen destiny's coiffure. Chi chi what she see is what they got—perception creates reality, or reality creates perception, depending on which way you're facing. Sitting by the cheat so long ago when dishonesty was furniture we could rest on.
White skin like blank pages, Lilly fine uneven teeth like broken piano keys still making music. Living and growing with cycles and moods swings—the pendulum knows something we don't about balance. A little tasteless today, sour tomorrow, because flavor is just time wearing different masks.
Move on, say the feet to the heart that wants to stay. Set your souls at ease like laying down weapons you didn't know you were carrying. The belongings are never as good as belonging itself—ownership is loneliness with papers. Lay down your head and wait for what's already arriving.
Sensation: strike a match and watch thought catch fire. Why did you fire the intern? Did he bring a concealed gun or something like that? Sometimes danger comes disguised as efficiency. Tender fool, blessed are the soft in a world of edges.
That far away road leads to the sky—all roads do if you walk long enough. Take me during the next go around because this carousel doesn't stop, it just changes music. Watch the world land into open arms that were always open but only now remember how to catch.
Leave it up to hymns to become dazed—even prayers get dizzy from too much spinning. They were old songs, they were sweet little birds on the backs of butterflies, carrying impossible weight with impossible grace. He was not tied to anyone, which is why he was connected to everything. Dredging the beach for what the ocean tried to hide but water can't keep secrets.
Go for it. Go. Because standing still is also movement on a spinning planet. It was too late to say goodbye so we say hello to the absence. He had so many lives before this one forgot to end. Was it the present or the future? Time is a rumor the clocks started.
When they were silk they were dolphins filled with now—transformation is just remembering what you were before you forgot. Swim child through the ocean of becoming. It could be a stone covered with wine stained soft tissue organs, which is one way to describe a heart.
When we were little we were caught unaware, napping in the brightness of possibilities before possibility learned to dim. Now and then intersect. Yes. Among such still and peaceful rotting bananas—even decay has its meditation. The warm embrace of soup line servers who know that hunger is holy. Look at us now. Oh yes.
( toy piano improvisation tinks go here )—small music for big feelings.
Caught on a waist like time is a belt. Girl, imagine us in the clouds of a blank pale blue sky where thoughts are weather. Counting lucky stars in a universe that doesn't believe in luck, only probability dressed in wishes. Beyond all of the different ash grays exists a color we haven't named yet.
Life goes on and on like a sentence that forgot punctuation. Nothing should go wrong as long as our heads are above water and we can breathe properly, but what about improper breathing? What about the gasp that teaches us we've been doing it wrong?
We have to know that we have lost some of our memories for the moment—amnesia as gift, forgetting as fresh start. Still we can go ahead and volunteer to tear down walls that divide what was never separate. Beyond the grace and heavenly light lives the graceless darkness where real things grow.
Pray that pictures of smiles are adorned with mariachi jazz horns—joy deserves a soundtrack. At the edge of a stage where performance meets reality, countless miles closer to the truth that distance is an opinion.
Everything connects because everything is already connected. The straight logic leads to the spiritual logic leads to the place where they were always the same thing wearing different costumes. This is why the pig is not a cow, why summer has pain, why we can say goodbye to what hasn't left and hello to what hasn't arrived.
Come back from the edge of the stage. Come back to the center where all edges meet. Or don't. The hymns will still be dazed, the dolphins still silk, the heart still a house too big for its foundation but standing anyway.
That's the logic of it. Both kinds. All kinds. The kind that makes sense and the kind that makes something better than sense—it makes music of the space between thoughts, symphony of the pause between heartbeats, song of the moment between falling and flying when we're doing both and neither.
Countless miles closer.
