Key Ballah

Are you still married? Are you still happy? I pray you are

Hello Key! I hope you're well. I am completely enamored and satiated for/of your work. I was wondering where your great-grandmother came from. Thank you. :)

I miss you. I really really do. You were kind and I was ugly. I regret that moment for all of time.

I am so inspired by you. I would like to plan on tattooing words you have written on my body, namely 'Have you ever looked at your body without the lens of your colonized mind?'. I just wanted to ask if I needed permission on your end, and if you would prefer I add your name to the quote. Thank you for your words. T.

Longer than I've been taught to love. Longer than the syllables in his name. Longer than he treated me ill. Longer than the fire we had in the beginning. I loved him. Then I was done and left even though we were never together. Then I met the most wonderful human being and we are getting engaged. Now he wants me. I said no. But I cannot get over the missing him or the pain or the feeling guilty, the still feeling guilty he taught me to feel. How do I? How do I wish him well but let him go?I care

The moon asks, (while I lay awake again for the 5th night, only half reciting surahs and getting lost in thought just before the end of them) it asks, why I always love things that are no good for me. (أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم Bismillāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm) I say I do not know. (Qul ʾaʿūḏu birabbi n-nās Maliki n-nās) The moon asks ( while I lay on my back in the dark of my room) It asks, why I am so scared all of the time. (ʾIlaahi n-nās) I say that I do not know. The moon asks, (while I think of you. while thoughts of you come of their own volition. while you come as easy and as hard as water) It asks, (while I think of you but when I should be thinking of me) It asks why I love you, when loving you stops me from loving me. (Min sharri l-waswāsi l-ḫannās) I say I do not know. (Allaḏī yuwaswisu fī ṣudūri n-nās) I ask myself "Who am I when I am finished loving you?" and something very ancient whispers "This."

whether you rock your pants sagging low, or a three piece suit, Jordan 5s, or a Gucci Boot, the truth is you're still strange fruit.

In this life there are few things more beautiful than being a woman. It is one of the few identities in which deciding that you are makes you so.

As Muslims, we are often told that we must stand together, shoulder to shoulder, so as to keep the shaitan (devil) out, but no one has ever told us what to do if no matter how close together we stand he can just come right through the front door.

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.

I hear men swear with their mother’s mouth, that they will never demean themselves by engaging in woman’s work. I watch women blisters and all scrubbing floors, washing toilets, cooking, mending, folding, and breaking for the men they love. He says in one argument or another “ do you know that the prophet said, if he could order any human to fall into sadjda for anyone but Allah, it would be wives to their husbands.” He says this with his mother’s mouth, her perfect teeth sit behind his full lips, her eyes sit deep on his perfect brown face. I see her cringe behind his eyes. I wonder how a man who looks so much like his mother, could resent her so fully.

and it has been true, that out of fear of loneliness I have dragged myself kicking and screaming into love, it was like watching a ship burn from shore, but still pulling out your ticket and trying board it anyway.

Do not read the comments section.