nahid :(:

Sometimes I wonder

all that I am today

is it worth the price she had to pay?

Can all that I have now

ever equal what was taken away from her?

They talk about resilience like it’s a trophy, something to be proud of.

But she didn’t want to be resilient. She didn’t want a trophy.

Resilience sounds like a choice, like someone decided to be strong.

But she didn’t get to decide anything.

She didn’t even know the word “resilience”

All she wanted was to feel loved and to feel safe.

I mothered my grief for so long

it started humming in my arms

   like it almost had a pulse.

I fed it my unslept nights

fed it silence rationed like policy,

   taught it to sit still while the world miscounted us

it did not grow—

   it accumulated

like numbers no one audits

it grew in

in everything

    in bone, in marrow

       in the quiet corners pretending to be calm

I called it mine

not ‘cause it was

but ‘cause not naming it

felt colder than keeping it

     because no one else would claim the damage

because abandonment here

      is inherited

and what kind of mother

misplaces her own ache?

            what is a mother

   but a body that keeps what breaks it?

they told me to let go

       like release is not a privilege

like hands are not trained by history

   to hold, to hold, to hold

this grief spoke in laws

     it signed my name in margins

and called it consent

I tried, sometimes

to set it down somewhere

somewhere not-here

     Somewhere far, I tried to unlove it,

but it would cry in a language I invented

     and forgot how to translate out of

so I picked it back up

resentfully tender

     like touching a bruise you still blame

they said: let go

    like hands don’t remember

but they never saw its face

how it looked at me

like I was the only place it lived

I didn't know who I was

        without something heavy to carry

without the weight I kept naming as purpose

I was scared

that if I loosened my grip, even gently

     it wouldn't have come back

if I put it down

      who testifies I was ever hurt?

so I kept it

the evidence

the quiet, unappealable weight

that answers

     for when the world asks for proof

It wasn’t care, it was consumption.

And I was the fuel.

-Nahid

I know I'm selfish about you, but for the first time, I don't feel apologetic about it.

I don't feel a sliver of guilt.

I'm not ashamed, and I won't change a thing about it.

I know I'm selfish, and I admit I'm greedy for you, insatiable, ravenous, always thirsty, always wanting.

I want all your time, your attention, your love.

every inch of the space in the endless abyss of your heart, and I want it all the time,

endlessly.

I want all the seats in the theater of your mind,

to be the only audience to all that's on the stage,

like an exclusive patron in the front row,

but also every other row and every seat.

I know I'm selfish,

to want you all,

and all of you, to myself.

But, darling, it's all so fast, and I am terrified!

like the kid eating his favorite ice cream after school, that he bought with the last of the pennies he scraped together all week,

because summer is brutal;

the sun melts it too quickly,

he has to snatch it from time, devour it, as soon as he can, as fast as he can, before it melts into nothing.

But he doesn't want to,

because he doesn't want it to end.

Why would he?

He waited so long for it, after all,

an eternity, a whole week—

a week is an eternity when you're a child.

But it will, inevitably,

it has to.

I know I take too many pictures, too often,

sometimes at the most inconvenient ti

mes,

sometimes when you don't want it.

When the sun hits that perfect corner of your ear in the taxi.

and it burns golden, glowing,

when you step out of the shower, and your face flushes with warmth,

when your burger is made exactly right-without the sour sauce you detest, and you're so ridiculously content,

when I drag you by the arm to steal a quick selfie, right by the office elevator after the longest shift, and you grumble, embarrassed by the camera's gaze, but you let me, because it's me.

I know it won't stretch time for us,

but oh, how I wish it could!

So I could freeze it, hold it forever, to inhale every moment, live it for as long as it could be lived for,

savor every day, every hour, minute, and second of it,

and every crumb in between.

Like his after-school ice cream on that scorching summer afternoon.

Summer is cruel.

It has always been cruel to him, and to me.

I know all the poets write in praise of it,

they sing of its beauty,

but it burns, it melts, it devours what he loves,

and it leaves us scorched.

The ice cream is his only refuge.

I'm scared it's slipping away all too soon,

and I won't get to live it twice—

no matter how many good days we have,

it's never enough.

You don't know how long I've waited for it, for you,

how much I've bled for it,

and the price l've paid.

How many times I've teetered on the edge of something beautiful, only for it to slip through my fingers,

like sand too fine to clutch in my fingers,

too fragile, too fleeting, to hold in desperate hands.

It's worth every ache, but it's all passing away too soon.

I don't get to savor it enough before we're forced to turn the page,

each page undeniably more beautiful than the last,

but I don't get to read it enough times.

Once is not enough.

Not for me.

I'd re-read each page forever if I could,

but forever is only once,

and once is not enough, not for me.

Oh, how I wish we could live this for longer than destined!

Savor every second of it

and every crumb in between,

Like a starving beggar left at the pedestrians’ mercy

grasping at every stranger, every passerby,

mistaking them for a savior, a provider,

hoping for shelter,

hoping to be fed, to be saved, but finding only cold indifference.

For longer than forever,

because forever is only once,

and forever is not enough,

not for me.

Can’t believe I’m still alive and not thinking of wanting to die as often as I used to ???!!!???!!

You know, like how you hear all the time that you're shaped by your experiences.

So I credited my "trauma" for my empathy, kindness, resilience, patience and everything that I felt was likable about me (but none for the things I despised about myself)

This belief fostered an unhealthy bond with my pain. I clung to it like a familiar companion, reluctant to let go of the one constant in my life that didn't abandon me. It wasn't until my beliefs were challenged that I experienced a paradigm shift.

I realized that my positive attributes weren't a result of my "trauma", but were intrinsic to who I am and who I choose to be. My resilience didn't stem from trauma; rather, it allowed me to navigate it. Kindness wasn't a lesson taught by pain, but a conscious choice I made.

However, I had allowed my trauma to occupy so much space in my psyche that there was little room for self-love or affection from others, and if someone else tried to love me, there was barely any room for their affection to take root. Only when I consciously pushed it away did I create space for love to exist.

Yet, in a bitter irony, I found this newly created space empty.

I had longed for love all my life, and when I finally made room for it, there was none—just me, all by myself

It was just me in an empty room of defeat, not even my trauma to give me company, waiting just outside, hoping to be called back in but I was so detached from it, as if we were strangers.

The void left by my departed pain remained unfilled, leaving me alone with myself for the first time. This solitude prompted a question: If I yearn for love so deeply, why am I still waiting passively for its arrival?

- nahid

No, I don't wish death upon him; I want him to be haunted.

I want him to be haunted by his own mind. I wish for him to endure a harsh realization, to be utterly consumed by the guilt and shame of the inhumane and unfathomable cruelty he inflicted on thousands of innocent lives. I hope that guilt will never grant him a moment of peace, nor allow him to look another human in the eyes, not even his own reflection.

I desire for him to be haunted and drown in the remorse of his brutality, to the extent that the notion of death by a million nerve ruptures while being boiled in the core of the sun becomes more appealing than the torment of his own conscience. I want him to remain alive until the unbearable weight of realization presses down upon him relentlessly.

I want for him to yearn for death as an escape from the relentless torment of his own conscience. At this juncture, death is no longer a fitting punishment for him. The luxury of death is reserved for those who have the right to escape. He deserves the inescapable captivity of a guilty conscience while he craves for death.

Death is a luxury and I want him to be deprived of it.

Her voice echoes like a haunting melody, akin to the suffocating silence that once gripped her throat, nearly stealing the breath from her lungs. She's growing colder, as frigid as the cruel hands that once mercilessly thrashed her, tossing her about like a worthless twig. Her tongue is sharpening, resembling the very dagger that once pierced her tender heart.

Now, she has transformed into the executioner, the one who wields the knife, twisting it within the victim's gut without remorse or second thought. She ignites the match, watching with sadistic pleasure as the victim's flesh is consumed by the merciless flames, relishing in their anguished cries that dance like macabre symphonies in her ears. This time, the fingerprints upon the neck are hers, and so is the palm that stifles the pleas for help.

She observes the crimson rivulets cascading from the wounds, staining her garments as they seep into the very fabric of her being. Yet, it no longer troubles her. The scent of blood no longer unnerves her; instead, she inhales it deeply, savoring its familiar essence like a twisted cherished memory.

The only divergence now is that the tormented and the tormentor reside within the same tormented vessel, and this time, the torment unfolds in sinister whispers, drowned in shadows that consume all light.

-nahid.

It makes me feel secure in a way that's more peaceful than receiving the opposite but also disconnected and dissociated from my past selves almost as if they were different people with different bodies. I can no longer recognise their experiences as my own even though I know it was still me. It's like I've lost the ability to perceive those experiences from a first person's point of view, rather it feels as if I'm a mere observer of those experiences, like it's a movie and I'm just a part of the audience even though I'm the performer on the stage.

I'm sitting on the front row watching myself perform on the stage, our gaze connect once in a while but we're strangers to each other.

It's scary, sad and reliving at the same time. It relieves me off the pain but there's also this huge pile of grief sitting on my chest constantly reminding me of what I lost and pointing at the closed doors of the rooms that I'm no longer capable of accessing, taunting me.

I'm relieved knowing that I can never have to go back in those rooms and face the horrors which are locked in there but it also makes me feel sad that I'll never be able to access what was once my own. It's still mine but nothing will ever tether me back to it.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to take a peek and confirm that it was all real and I'm not making it all up in my head because it's so difficult when you can't even feel it anymore, but I can't because the bridge between us has been destroyed.

This realisation drives me mad and makes me question my reality, it blurs out the line between what's real and what's not and I sometimes I can't tell which side I'm on and what exists on which plane. Sometimes I feel as if I'm a byproduct of my own imagination and everything I know is nothing but mere fabrication weaved to mirror reality, which I'm not sure what it is to begin with.

I'm done mourning and the last tear has dried, now if anything trickles down my face, it'll be blood of my generosity when I'm beheading it.