Hudaa Saeed

On a hill on the edge of town,

There is an old yellow house.

Many know of it, few know it.

You see, out by the street

The address is listed-

5’5” White Female

Most think this is all they need to know.

But what is an address without its house,

If not a teacher without any students

Or a cab driver without a car?

Well-meaning, but without purpose.

If you choose to come nearer,

You’ll find a path leads to the house.

A path lined with many colorful flowers-

Blue-collar jobs, white-collar roots,

Red-neck communities, a white-walled apartment,

Green money in my bank account,

Green car in my driveway,

Black sizes on my clothes.

The path is beautiful, but flowers change with the seasons,

And if the pride of the house is its flowers,

What do you do when autumn comes?

The flowers are there for one reason-

To guide the way to what really matters.

This house isn’t large, on the contrary, it’s small,

There are some cobwebs in the corners,

Some paint chipped on the walls,

Some rooms with poor lighting.

But you’ll find what you seek,

So look for the faults if you must,

But search for good if you can.

You see, as with all things,

there is more to this house than meets the eye.

The foundation is Faith- Made of a new creation,

Equal parts forgiven and restored,

Its strength is in the Lord.

Rising from the foundation are four columns on which the house is built-

Honesty and Integrity,

Loyalty and Dependability,

Charity and Service,

Excellency and Diligence.

Four types of beams give support-

Experiences Had, good and bad;

Places Visited and the ones called home;

People Known, for a season or a lifetime;

and Lessons Learned, with smiles or scars.

The walls are made sturdy by Dreams and Goals.

Some are larger than others, some thicker,

Some older, some newer, some remodeled

But all are important and integral to this house.

The roof of this house is made of the rare material Good Family.

It protects and completes the house.

There are many shingles on the roof,

But six are the largest-

The Hard-working Father, The Supporting Mother,

The Joking Brother, The Creating Sister, Her Serving Husband,

And the niece that taught the depths of love.

The floor plan of this house was drawn by Choices Made.

The walls aren’t always where you expect,

Some doors could have been placed better,

But all the choices, even the bad ones, made the house what it is.

And it isn’t perfect, but it is enough.

The house is painted by Habits, furnished by Hobbies,

And decorated by Cherished Songs and Books.

This house is lighted by Smiles and Laughter

And powered by Curious Questions and Competition.

Way in the back of this old yellow house is a storage room,

You see, this house has recently been remodeled.

The old foundation made of Self-Sufficiency,

And the old columns of Accomplishment,

People-Pleasing, Winning, and Solitude

Have all been removed and replaced.

While they are no longer in the house,

Pieces of them share the room with Secrets and Insecurities.

The room is locked with Tears and Scars and Pride.

The Remodeler is working to clean out that room though,

And make it like the rest of the house.

You see, He has a master plan for this little house-

He’s modeling it after the perfect one-Jesus.

So, you see, to stand out on the path or by the sign and claim to know this house,

Is like to claim to be a therapist,

but cry yourself to sleep at night, and not know why.

So, please, walk away or come inside.

But do not claim to love that which you do not know,

For such a thing cannot be done.

All are welcome in this house, the door is never locked,

But it is thick and heavy and sometimes creaks when it opens,

So if you want to come in, it will take some effort,

But I think you’ll find the effort is worth the house inside.

Hurt is a wall

standing between us and life.

Height and width

shifting with every soul.

And we—

we must find a way through.

Do we climb?

Do we walk around?

Do we batter ourselves against it

until our hands bleed,

our hearts cracked wide open?

After enough pain,

we find a method that works.

The wall forces us to change,

to grow—

sometimes by gaining,

sometimes by leaving pieces of ourselves behind.

The height of the wall

is the depth of the hurt.

Some build walls we can vault over,

light as mist, fleeting.

Others—

towers of steel and stone,

unyielding, unsurpassable.

Some avoid pain with every fiber of their being.

Others drink it in,

swallow it whole,

let it carve them into something new,

something raw.

Most of us?

Somewhere bleeding in the middle.

Pain is relative.

Two hearts can endure the same storm

and come out utterly different.

Because it is not what happens to us

but what already lives inside us

that shapes the walls,

that shapes the way we rise,

the way we fall,

the way we crawl toward the other side,

who we become when we get there—

all of it comes from within.

Some carry burdens like feathers.

Others break

under the weight of a single stone.

It may seem unfair,

but suffering cannot be dictated.

One wolf may take a dozen arrows

and keep running.

Another falls from a single one.

The length of the wall

is how long we allow the hurt to linger.

Some leave it behind

when they leave the room,

never look back,

never give it another thought.

Others carry it in their bones,

in their chest,

in the quiet of sleepless nights,

day after day,

their journey around the wall

long, winding, exhausting.

Some walk life with few walls.

Others spend more time navigating walls

than moving forward.

And yet—

these walls are part of us,

woven into our story,

etched into our strength,

and, sometimes,

into our scars.

Perhaps, with time,

we learn to build smaller walls,

to climb them with less fear,

to let the hurt soften and fade.

And perhaps, on this long, fragile walk called life,

we find another soul to walk beside us,

to reach across the divide,

to help shorten the walls,

lighten the load,

and make the path a little gentler.

Because in the end,

the walls we face are not just barriers—

they are the maps of our survival,

the echoes of our tears,

the proof of how fiercely we have lived,

and the bridges that guide us

toward one another.

Shadows of the Badge

I became a cop

because I wanted to help.

Not to save the world—

just to change it

for one person at a time.

I knew my name would fade

long before a century passed,

but I hoped my work wouldn’t.

In the beginning,

I loved the job.

Every shift was a new story,

a new chance to be good.

I settled fights,

I comforted the hurting,

I believed in people—

their stories,

their hearts,

their thousand small miracles.

Then the years went by.

And the stories changed.

Suddenly every face I saw

belonged to someone

on the worst day of their life,

or someone

making someone else’s life worse.

Victims bleeding grief,

offenders bleeding apathy—

people with no shame,

no remorse,

no desire to climb out of the wreckage

they’d built themselves.

I watched love

turn to war

in homes filled with

snapshots of better times.

I watched promises

splinter into excuses—

“he wasn’t always like this…

he’s good most of the time…

I can save him…

just one more chance…”

again,

again,

again,

again.

Ordinary people

with ordinary jobs

and pretty lawns

doing the ugliest things imaginable

behind closed doors.

You learn you can’t trust anyone.

Not really.

Not fully.

People are never

who you think they are.

And after a while,

you stop believing

you could ever know them.

How do you watch

relationship after relationship

implode

and not wonder

if being alone

is safer?

I’ve seen things

no imagination would dare create.

Things I didn’t know

human hands were capable of.

I’ve watched people

destroy themselves

slowly,

or in a single gunshot.

I’ve seen parents

cradle their dead child

and beg them

to breathe again.

How do you even think about

bringing a child

into the world after that?

Most people have no idea

what’s waiting in the shadows.

They say,

“That could never happen to me,”

until the moment

it does.

I used to pray

for the dying,

for the broken

as I left them behind,

for the ones who return

again

and again

to the pain

they begged to escape.

But somewhere,

those prayers turned to silence

when I walked away.

It’s harder to hope now.

The nightmares know

my name.

Disney raised me

to believe in “happily ever after,”

in courage, kindness,

do the right thing—

and life would bloom.

Love would triumph.

Good would win.

But I’ve watched

selfish men prosper,

gentle women get crushed,

families fall apart

before my eyes

every single day.

Where is justice

when a man shatters a woman’s face

with a candle

and walks away

with probation

and an expunged record

if he’s “good” for a while?

Where is justice

when I swallow

every insult,

every threat,

every lie

thrown at the uniform—

and I’m expected

to stay calm,

stay professional,

stay better

than the worst of humanity?

Where is justice

when a judge

lets an offender go

and it’s called mercy,

but if I don’t arrest

then it’s misconduct?

Where is justice

in the system

that works against

its officers of justice?

How do you do the right thing

when the right thing

never wins?

I became a cop

to change lives.

Turns out

the only life I changed

was my own.

This job took the light—

the joy,

the hope,

the softness—

and fed it

to something with teeth.

Now I look in the mirror

and see a shadow

wearing my face,

a realist

with a dark soul

and heavy thoughts,

someone who knows the world

as it is,

as it always has been,

as it always will be.

Once innocence is stripped,

you never get it back.

You just keep moving

through the story

until the ink runs out.

There’s no fairy tale ending.

No perfect sunset.

Just a quiet, lonely truth

at the edge of everything—

a life lived in the dark

after all the light goes out.

Hurt is a wall

standing between us and life.

Height and width

shifting with every soul.

And we—

we must find a way through.

Do we climb?

Do we walk around?

Do we batter ourselves against it

until our hands bleed,

our hearts cracked wide open?

After enough pain,

we find a method that works.

The wall forces us to change,

to grow—

sometimes by gaining,

sometimes by leaving pieces of ourselves behind.

The height of the wall

is the depth of the hurt.

Some build walls we can vault over,

light as mist, fleeting.

Others—

towers of steel and stone,

unyielding, unsurpassable.

Some avoid pain with every fiber of their being.

Others drink it in,

swallow it whole,

let it carve them into something new,

something raw.

Most of us?

Somewhere bleeding in the middle.

Pain is relative.

Two hearts can endure the same storm

and come out utterly different.

Because it is not what happens to us

but what already lives inside us

that shapes the walls,

that shapes the way we rise,

the way we fall,

the way we crawl toward the other side,

who we become when we get there—

all of it comes from within.

Some carry burdens like feathers.

Others break

under the weight of a single stone.

It may seem unfair,

but suffering cannot be dictated.

One wolf may take a dozen arrows

and keep running.

Another falls from a single one.

The length of the wall

is how long we allow the hurt to linger.

Some leave it behind

when they leave the room,

never look back,

never give it another thought.

Others carry it in their bones,

in their chest,

in the quiet of sleepless nights,

day after day,

their journey around the wall

long, winding, exhausting.

Some walk life with few walls.

Others spend more time navigating walls

than moving forward.

And yet—

these walls are part of us,

woven into our story,

etched into our strength,

and, sometimes,

into our scars.

Perhaps, with time,

we learn to build smaller walls,

to climb them with less fear,

to let the hurt soften and fade.

And perhaps, on this long, fragile walk called life,

we find another soul to walk beside us,

to reach across the divide,

to help shorten the walls,

lighten the load,

and make the path a little gentler.

Because in the end,

the walls we face are not just barriers—

they are the maps of our survival,

the echoes of our tears,

the proof of how fiercely we have lived,

and the bridges that guide us

Shadows of the Badge

I became a cop

because I wanted to help.

Not to save the world—

just to change it

for one person at a time.

I knew my name would fade

long before a century passed,

but I hoped my work wouldn’t.

In the beginning,

I loved the job.

Every shift was a new story,

a new chance to be good.

I settled fights,

I comforted the hurting,

I believed in people—

their stories,

their hearts,

their thousand small miracles.

Then the years went by.

And the stories changed.

Suddenly every face I saw

belonged to someone

on the worst day of their life,

or someone

making someone else’s life worse.

Victims bleeding grief,

offenders bleeding apathy—

people with no shame,

no remorse,

no desire to climb out of the wreckage

they’d built themselves.

I watched love

turn to war

in homes filled with

snapshots of better times.

I watched promises

splinter into excuses—

“he wasn’t always like this…

he’s good most of the time…

I can save him…

just one more chance…”

again,

again,

again,

again.

Ordinary people

with ordinary jobs

and pretty lawns

doing the ugliest things imaginable

behind closed doors.

You learn you can’t trust anyone.

Not really.

Not fully.

People are never

who you think they are.

And after a while,

you stop believing

you could ever know them.

How do you watch

relationship after relationship

implode

and not wonder

if being alone

is safer?

I’ve seen things

no imagination would dare create.

Things I didn’t know

human hands were capable of.

I’ve watched people

destroy themselves

slowly,

or in a single gunshot.

I’ve seen parents

cradle their dead child

and beg them

to breathe again.

How do you even think about

bringing a child

into the world after that?

Most people have no idea

what’s waiting in the shadows.

They say,

“That could never happen to me,”

until the moment

it does.

I used to pray

for the dying,

for the broken

as I left them behind,

for the ones who return

again

and again

to the pain

they begged to escape.

But somewhere,

those prayers turned to silence

when I walked away.

It’s harder to hope now.

The nightmares know

my name.

Disney raised me

to believe in “happily ever after,”

in courage, kindness,

do the right thing—

and life would bloom.

Love would triumph.

Good would win.

But I’ve watched

selfish men prosper,

gentle women get crushed,

families fall apart

before my eyes

every single day.

Where is justice

when a man shatters a woman’s face

with a candle

and walks away

with probation

and an expunged record

if he’s “good” for a while?

Where is justice

when I swallow

every insult,

every threat,

every lie

thrown at the uniform—

and I’m expected

to stay calm,

stay professional,

stay better

than the worst of humanity?

Where is justice

when a judge

lets an offender go

and it’s called mercy,

but if I don’t arrest

then it’s misconduct?

Where is justice

in the system

that works against

its officers of justice?

How do you do the right thing

when the right thing

never wins?

I became a cop

to change lives.

Turns out

the only life I changed

was my own.

This job took the light—

the joy,

the hope,

the softness—

and fed it

to something with teeth.

Now I look in the mirror

and see a shadow

wearing my face,

a realist

with a dark soul

and heavy thoughts,

someone who knows the world

as it is,

as it always has been,

as it always will be.

Once innocence is stripped,

you never get it back.

You just keep moving

through the story

until the ink runs out.

There’s no fairy tale ending.

No perfect sunset.

Just a quiet, lonely truth

at the edge of everything—

a life lived in the dark