“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~ Gandhi
Upon coming back from India, I had a long adjusting process. Living in a house with my best friends helped me a lot! It made me realize, it was alright to take time to adjust and to just remember how to be "normal."
Upon coming back from India, I had a long adjusting process. Living in a house with my best friends helped me a lot! It made me realize, it was alright to take time to adjust and to just remember how to be "normal."
The Lyric Essay: Spring of 2017
Final essay of senior year: My last assignment was to write a lyric essay, an essay that mixes non-fiction writing with poetry, about anything I want. Here is my essay that is about life, death, and what makes us human.
"A word bank for the living"
Example:
Nobody notices, only you've known,
you're not sick, not crazy,
not angry, not sad--
It's just this, you're injured.
–lobotomy
[claudia rankine]
Hypothermia:
The kind of cold that sneaks up from behind, tracing your steps, waiting to pounce. It lingers even after the shivering subsides. The sky rains, the rain pours down your face, and you like it. You like the wildness of it. The way it makes you feel is wild. Lifting your face to the sky, you stretch out our tongue. Desperate. Wild is a feeling-no, a tangible energy that can be harnessed: raw freedom. But now you are drenched, and you must fight to keep warm. You miss the taste on your mouth, your skin. You find shelter from the rain. Taking off your clothes, you realize warmth is not a product of freedom. Warmth only materializes for those who walk the yellow brick road and who find within themselves their own inner heat to keep from wilting from the inside out.
Clothes scatter aimlessly around. Even naked, heat does not stick to skin. Your skin cells are made of solid ice now. Bare. You feel them weighing you down, down till the ice is the only thing between skin and stone. No longer do you shiver, no longer do you feel, and no longer do you desire heat. You are fully caught now, caught in the cold or caught to it. The ice becomes your blood, sinews, toes, tendons, muscles, bones, heart. Only your brain remains. Encaged in ice, the brain lies cold and functioning. Like being underwater, you only hear a sliver of what you once heard before. Unlike being underwater, you will never know what lies above the surface. The surface now dances with ice. The dark is the music that feeds it. Your mind is what keeps it afloat. And your heart is what taught it how.
sometimes
the
night
wakes in
the
middle
of me.
and i can
do
nothing
but
become
the
moon.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dementia:
To look back, it feels as dreams so often do after awakening- fuzzy. But somewhere in that dream, you learned something about the world; the rare dream that you can recall years later because of the impossibility of places, of things you have never seen nor heard in real life. The one that shocks you into remembrance, that you were nine years-old and your father was dying, those were just details. The essence of remembering was in the looks of the Brazilians on the street, the healing of water, and the love of fathers. “No person is an island,” or so your dad used to say. “We cannot go through life unaffected by the world around us.” We are meant to be traced in the subliminal messages of people and places and times, etched secretly and without our knowing. It’s what makes us human.
My father’s words hold weight long after the impression of his hand in mine began to retract.
stay is a
sensitive
word.
we wear
who
stayed
and
who left
in our
skin
forever.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Shock:
The Earth endures; it endures every living thing who calls it home trampling its art and poisoning its atmosphere. Animals endure cruelty; they endure the stifling of their savage nature at the hands of those who starve them. Butterflies endure metamorphosis; they endure the forced transition of world and body that, perhaps, they never knew exist nor wanted to. Humans endure. Soldiers endure war; they endure obedient structures that shatter like glass when pressure builds a small crack. Women endure life; they endure giving life to another being while concurrently maintaining no autonomy over this endurance. Children endure poverty; they endure the poverty of being a second-class citizen in a country that preaches the sanctity of inalienable rights and “all men were created equal.” People endure. That is what we do. But what of that which is unendurable?
please just, fall
apart.
open
your
mouth.
and
hurt.
hurt the
size of e-
very-
thing it
is.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Osteosarcoma:
The truth is pain:
the pain of everyday seeing your body get frail, less capable of sustaining life, and even mutinous. It is physical pain. Through pressing of nerves by the tumors and the release of chemicals such as prostaglandins that activate nociceptors, nerves are fired up to make our minds perceive pain. Imagine your pain is so large that they remove your femur and replace it with steel. “Too late,” they say. The sarcoma has metastasized to your lungs and you must now be on an oxygen tank for the next year- if you live that long. You had over nine surgeries, of which each brought on their own sort of pain. But this is nothing.
Cancer is also mental “pain:”
By this, I mean the pain referred to as suffering or discomfort and not the literal firing of nerve endings. Your pain is in not being able to sleep at night for years due to an unrelenting cough, not being able to do the things you love with your children in the midst of the knowledge that you may never do them again, not being able to make your daughter sandwiches when she is too young to understand why, not being able to breathe on your own-the claustrophobia of knowing without an external machine your body may not sustain you- the icy panic when understanding descends in a mist the realization of the immediate death of your body, and, ultimately, the moment when your faith forcibly unites with reality.
Happiness is a choice, my father said.
The adults called it cancer. What inserted itself within the folds of your child brain was rather: the overpowering limp which would prevent him from “skiing” you down the bunny hill; the scream which would permeate the air after you accidentally bump his leg; the you-sized oxygen tank chained to his side which prevented him via embarrassment from coming to “daddy daughter donuts”; the cough which would wake you up at night and the red sticky liquid which he drank like whiskey; the bloody tumor or tissue which he occasionally would choke up and your mom would store in the freezer for biopsy like your fridge was her own personal lab; the days of class missed while driving to Seattle for treatment every weekend which prevented you from learning to read; the immobility which would ultimately cause you to function without your dad long before he left. This is what you know cancer to be.
I am trying to remember you
and
let you go
at
the same time.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dysmorphia:
Is this it, she thinks. This is living? This is it? This is her? She slowly lowers her eyes from the mirror, fluttering her fingers upon the dresser top as if she has always been able to reach the armoire so simply. Not struggling, she spies her own daunting reflection with only a hint of amusement. This is her? I mean, I am me? She is I? Again, with slight pride, she earnestly looks into the child’s eyes and wonders how she became this. With less pride, she smiles sadly and remembers the moments that haunt the dark of her mind. Again, the memories help her evoke that this wonderful, strong, rebellious soul is indeed her own; however, the girl looking through her is completely foreign. In spite of herself, she opens her eyes for the first time and becomes brashly and closely entangled with the world. She finally sees the corresponding image in the mirror. For the first time, she sees what must only be--- herself.
The first time I remember, I do not understand. The second time I remember, I do not remember the first; still, I do not understand. What I have come to remember, as well as what I have come to forget, is this. It is a picture, a scene, or a fleeting image locked within me. These moments must be let go, shared, and spread for all who wish to understand. Life is ethereal. It is unsubstantial, broken, such as when under the cover of fog. We may see but we are blind. From each angle is a different shade or color of light and, as we lie in the wake we left in our own stead, we might never once catch glimpse of what waits before us- never of what is around us. Not until the fog dissipates do we emerge from our blindness. Some call this death. Some say one may experience a clearness while, not dead, but dying. I cannot speak to this. I am alive. I am not dying. I am still motionless, running full speed in whatever direction allows me to move the fastest. Whether forward or back I know not. However, I elude myself. I am not moving, merely time moves through me. I feel the wind. This is how I have come to perceive movement; through the feel of it, through the pain.
there is
peaceful.
there is
wild.
i am
both at
the same
time.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Naturopathy:
The beauty is: my nephew’s name is the same as my father’s. My father’s skin can be seen in the golden hues of our summer kissed hides. Summer is the time that I most remember my father’s warm laugh. Laughter comes easier for some but so too do tears. Tears of recollection stream down my aunt’s lips as she tells me of the time she spent Thanksgiving alone with her brother. My brother is my father’s adopted son. His son talks of his adopted grandpa’s black hand. The black hand is a game that my grandpa taught to his son. His son plays that game with his daughter. His daughter’s brother plays this with his 8-month-old son. The son has the same name as his father’s father.
Healing is a tribe of wild horses-
who were broken -
then released-
but forgot they were once free.
both.
i want to
stay.
i want to
leave.
i am
three
oceans
away
from my
soul.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Melancholy:
I feel like every decision you make in life has a way of making you. You think you are choosing, that you can decide, even the most miniscule of degrees, and then you realize that every choice you have made does not play out as the manifestation of that choice. Rather, you bought into one representation of the decision. But that decision was masked. When that mask comes off, you realize what you truly bought into. The universe laughs. The universe laughs without reservation, in your face, and then it starts crying because you are so god damn funny. It cries at your belief, the belief that you can choose. I could watch this show all day, it thinks. All day the universe can watch you, in irony, plan out how your life will be and then over and over watch as it steps and twists your decisions to deceive you. Still, it observes as you reconstruct your choices from the bone yard from which your ashes lay and they laugh because no matter how many times they huff and puff and blow your house down you still believe you have a chance. You believe you can somehow impact your end results and maybe, just maybe sneak past the guardians that border all paths. No longer will the universe laugh, but when it witnesses your failings over and over it becomes bored and moves onto the next devastating case of optimism. This is your chance! When the universe finally gets bored, you may rise. However, do not go too high or it will catch notice once more. You are too high. Beware, you may never be permitted to escape. Only the universe is allowed to laugh. So when you laugh at yourself, the universe complains. Why are you not hurt by my charade, your tears are my sustenance. Without your pain, I will not survive. So you starve it with laughter. Your friends think you mad. Your family worries for your sanity. But you laugh, the universe cries. So you laugh. The universe tares down every path you decide but you keep deciding because you are human. You keep laughing because, although it is painful, you will not give the universe fuel with your tears. So laugh. Keep laughing. Fight. Soon you laugh because you realize you can. You are still here, still living. Even though every decision you ever made has been blocked with barriers that spike in the air and shoot off electric charge whenever you get too close, you are here. The universe is starving and you are a little mad. But the universe is starving and no longer does it matter if you are your own creator. You are in charge. For once in your goddamn life, you decide your happiness. The universe does not, no matter how it tries to break you, ever manage to feed off your happiness. No longer does the universe laugh, no longer do you cry. You stop providing sustenance for its brittle system, it stops providing you a reason. Your life will be no more a channel on its television screen.
getting
yourself
together.
what
about
undoing
yourself.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Cardiac Arrest:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or so I have been told. What we have not been told- how long it takes to heal. Not bodies but minds. Hearts. Thoughts. Not the kind of heart that is muscle and pumps blood: the kind of heart that allows you to breathe without pain; the kind that sears fire through veins. The kind that lets us love- Thyself, thy neighbor, thy brother, thy lover, thy heart is thy mother. My heart, not me, is a part of me. It is other. I am other. Some wounds never heal. They fester. They burn. They create flash floods, rivers of acid rain. As snow on ground, the sizzling evaporation freezes out all sounds. The cold melts down. The silence is an echo. Fire fizzles out. Rain only can protrude this absence of all things.
expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both
cleanse you.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dehydration:
Some things are meant to undo you. Some things are meant to be undone. If only you could have held tighter, you would have been the one- to be let go, to tie together, to fish bones from the sea. You had only a moment. Now the moment is done.
I remember a hand. It was my favorite hand in the world. I had closed my fingers around its own so many times before that they felt like a part of my skin; we were the same temperature. I used to fall asleep with this hand wrapped around my own. I convinced myself every night that if I could manage to hold tight then it would be there in the morning. It never was.
Ashes float through snow peaked mountains, down glacial rivers, and beneath a Scottish temple tree. As rivers build current and drain into oceans, memories sink beneath the shore. They call out from below- a siren song. They beg to be held. They want to taste your flesh. They want to drown you in their beauty. If you listen, they will reach out their paws and you will follow short. Only cold can be felt from so far beneath the sun. But sometimes, you want to go under. You want to sink. You want to lose sight of the shore. And you smile when it’s done.
the hard
season
will
split you
through.
do not
worry.
you will
bleed
water.
do not
worry.
this is
grief.
your face
will fall
out and
down
your
skin
and
there
will be s-
corchin-
g.
but do
not
worry.
keep
speaking
the years
from
their
hiding
places.
keep
coughing
up smo-
ke from
all the
deaths
you have
died.
keep the
rage
tender.
because
the soft
season
will
come.
it will
come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both
hands in
your
chest.
up all
night.
up all of
the
nights.
to drink
all
damage
into
love.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
"A word bank for the living"
Example:
Nobody notices, only you've known,
you're not sick, not crazy,
not angry, not sad--
It's just this, you're injured.
–lobotomy
[claudia rankine]
Hypothermia:
The kind of cold that sneaks up from behind, tracing your steps, waiting to pounce. It lingers even after the shivering subsides. The sky rains, the rain pours down your face, and you like it. You like the wildness of it. The way it makes you feel is wild. Lifting your face to the sky, you stretch out our tongue. Desperate. Wild is a feeling-no, a tangible energy that can be harnessed: raw freedom. But now you are drenched, and you must fight to keep warm. You miss the taste on your mouth, your skin. You find shelter from the rain. Taking off your clothes, you realize warmth is not a product of freedom. Warmth only materializes for those who walk the yellow brick road and who find within themselves their own inner heat to keep from wilting from the inside out.
Clothes scatter aimlessly around. Even naked, heat does not stick to skin. Your skin cells are made of solid ice now. Bare. You feel them weighing you down, down till the ice is the only thing between skin and stone. No longer do you shiver, no longer do you feel, and no longer do you desire heat. You are fully caught now, caught in the cold or caught to it. The ice becomes your blood, sinews, toes, tendons, muscles, bones, heart. Only your brain remains. Encaged in ice, the brain lies cold and functioning. Like being underwater, you only hear a sliver of what you once heard before. Unlike being underwater, you will never know what lies above the surface. The surface now dances with ice. The dark is the music that feeds it. Your mind is what keeps it afloat. And your heart is what taught it how.
sometimes
the
night
wakes in
the
middle
of me.
and i can
do
nothing
but
become
the
moon.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dementia:
To look back, it feels as dreams so often do after awakening- fuzzy. But somewhere in that dream, you learned something about the world; the rare dream that you can recall years later because of the impossibility of places, of things you have never seen nor heard in real life. The one that shocks you into remembrance, that you were nine years-old and your father was dying, those were just details. The essence of remembering was in the looks of the Brazilians on the street, the healing of water, and the love of fathers. “No person is an island,” or so your dad used to say. “We cannot go through life unaffected by the world around us.” We are meant to be traced in the subliminal messages of people and places and times, etched secretly and without our knowing. It’s what makes us human.
My father’s words hold weight long after the impression of his hand in mine began to retract.
stay is a
sensitive
word.
we wear
who
stayed
and
who left
in our
skin
forever.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Shock:
The Earth endures; it endures every living thing who calls it home trampling its art and poisoning its atmosphere. Animals endure cruelty; they endure the stifling of their savage nature at the hands of those who starve them. Butterflies endure metamorphosis; they endure the forced transition of world and body that, perhaps, they never knew exist nor wanted to. Humans endure. Soldiers endure war; they endure obedient structures that shatter like glass when pressure builds a small crack. Women endure life; they endure giving life to another being while concurrently maintaining no autonomy over this endurance. Children endure poverty; they endure the poverty of being a second-class citizen in a country that preaches the sanctity of inalienable rights and “all men were created equal.” People endure. That is what we do. But what of that which is unendurable?
please just, fall
apart.
open
your
mouth.
and
hurt.
hurt the
size of e-
very-
thing it
is.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Osteosarcoma:
The truth is pain:
the pain of everyday seeing your body get frail, less capable of sustaining life, and even mutinous. It is physical pain. Through pressing of nerves by the tumors and the release of chemicals such as prostaglandins that activate nociceptors, nerves are fired up to make our minds perceive pain. Imagine your pain is so large that they remove your femur and replace it with steel. “Too late,” they say. The sarcoma has metastasized to your lungs and you must now be on an oxygen tank for the next year- if you live that long. You had over nine surgeries, of which each brought on their own sort of pain. But this is nothing.
Cancer is also mental “pain:”
By this, I mean the pain referred to as suffering or discomfort and not the literal firing of nerve endings. Your pain is in not being able to sleep at night for years due to an unrelenting cough, not being able to do the things you love with your children in the midst of the knowledge that you may never do them again, not being able to make your daughter sandwiches when she is too young to understand why, not being able to breathe on your own-the claustrophobia of knowing without an external machine your body may not sustain you- the icy panic when understanding descends in a mist the realization of the immediate death of your body, and, ultimately, the moment when your faith forcibly unites with reality.
Happiness is a choice, my father said.
The adults called it cancer. What inserted itself within the folds of your child brain was rather: the overpowering limp which would prevent him from “skiing” you down the bunny hill; the scream which would permeate the air after you accidentally bump his leg; the you-sized oxygen tank chained to his side which prevented him via embarrassment from coming to “daddy daughter donuts”; the cough which would wake you up at night and the red sticky liquid which he drank like whiskey; the bloody tumor or tissue which he occasionally would choke up and your mom would store in the freezer for biopsy like your fridge was her own personal lab; the days of class missed while driving to Seattle for treatment every weekend which prevented you from learning to read; the immobility which would ultimately cause you to function without your dad long before he left. This is what you know cancer to be.
I am trying to remember you
and
let you go
at
the same time.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dysmorphia:
Is this it, she thinks. This is living? This is it? This is her? She slowly lowers her eyes from the mirror, fluttering her fingers upon the dresser top as if she has always been able to reach the armoire so simply. Not struggling, she spies her own daunting reflection with only a hint of amusement. This is her? I mean, I am me? She is I? Again, with slight pride, she earnestly looks into the child’s eyes and wonders how she became this. With less pride, she smiles sadly and remembers the moments that haunt the dark of her mind. Again, the memories help her evoke that this wonderful, strong, rebellious soul is indeed her own; however, the girl looking through her is completely foreign. In spite of herself, she opens her eyes for the first time and becomes brashly and closely entangled with the world. She finally sees the corresponding image in the mirror. For the first time, she sees what must only be--- herself.
The first time I remember, I do not understand. The second time I remember, I do not remember the first; still, I do not understand. What I have come to remember, as well as what I have come to forget, is this. It is a picture, a scene, or a fleeting image locked within me. These moments must be let go, shared, and spread for all who wish to understand. Life is ethereal. It is unsubstantial, broken, such as when under the cover of fog. We may see but we are blind. From each angle is a different shade or color of light and, as we lie in the wake we left in our own stead, we might never once catch glimpse of what waits before us- never of what is around us. Not until the fog dissipates do we emerge from our blindness. Some call this death. Some say one may experience a clearness while, not dead, but dying. I cannot speak to this. I am alive. I am not dying. I am still motionless, running full speed in whatever direction allows me to move the fastest. Whether forward or back I know not. However, I elude myself. I am not moving, merely time moves through me. I feel the wind. This is how I have come to perceive movement; through the feel of it, through the pain.
there is
peaceful.
there is
wild.
i am
both at
the same
time.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Naturopathy:
The beauty is: my nephew’s name is the same as my father’s. My father’s skin can be seen in the golden hues of our summer kissed hides. Summer is the time that I most remember my father’s warm laugh. Laughter comes easier for some but so too do tears. Tears of recollection stream down my aunt’s lips as she tells me of the time she spent Thanksgiving alone with her brother. My brother is my father’s adopted son. His son talks of his adopted grandpa’s black hand. The black hand is a game that my grandpa taught to his son. His son plays that game with his daughter. His daughter’s brother plays this with his 8-month-old son. The son has the same name as his father’s father.
Healing is a tribe of wild horses-
who were broken -
then released-
but forgot they were once free.
both.
i want to
stay.
i want to
leave.
i am
three
oceans
away
from my
soul.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Melancholy:
I feel like every decision you make in life has a way of making you. You think you are choosing, that you can decide, even the most miniscule of degrees, and then you realize that every choice you have made does not play out as the manifestation of that choice. Rather, you bought into one representation of the decision. But that decision was masked. When that mask comes off, you realize what you truly bought into. The universe laughs. The universe laughs without reservation, in your face, and then it starts crying because you are so god damn funny. It cries at your belief, the belief that you can choose. I could watch this show all day, it thinks. All day the universe can watch you, in irony, plan out how your life will be and then over and over watch as it steps and twists your decisions to deceive you. Still, it observes as you reconstruct your choices from the bone yard from which your ashes lay and they laugh because no matter how many times they huff and puff and blow your house down you still believe you have a chance. You believe you can somehow impact your end results and maybe, just maybe sneak past the guardians that border all paths. No longer will the universe laugh, but when it witnesses your failings over and over it becomes bored and moves onto the next devastating case of optimism. This is your chance! When the universe finally gets bored, you may rise. However, do not go too high or it will catch notice once more. You are too high. Beware, you may never be permitted to escape. Only the universe is allowed to laugh. So when you laugh at yourself, the universe complains. Why are you not hurt by my charade, your tears are my sustenance. Without your pain, I will not survive. So you starve it with laughter. Your friends think you mad. Your family worries for your sanity. But you laugh, the universe cries. So you laugh. The universe tares down every path you decide but you keep deciding because you are human. You keep laughing because, although it is painful, you will not give the universe fuel with your tears. So laugh. Keep laughing. Fight. Soon you laugh because you realize you can. You are still here, still living. Even though every decision you ever made has been blocked with barriers that spike in the air and shoot off electric charge whenever you get too close, you are here. The universe is starving and you are a little mad. But the universe is starving and no longer does it matter if you are your own creator. You are in charge. For once in your goddamn life, you decide your happiness. The universe does not, no matter how it tries to break you, ever manage to feed off your happiness. No longer does the universe laugh, no longer do you cry. You stop providing sustenance for its brittle system, it stops providing you a reason. Your life will be no more a channel on its television screen.
getting
yourself
together.
what
about
undoing
yourself.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Cardiac Arrest:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or so I have been told. What we have not been told- how long it takes to heal. Not bodies but minds. Hearts. Thoughts. Not the kind of heart that is muscle and pumps blood: the kind of heart that allows you to breathe without pain; the kind that sears fire through veins. The kind that lets us love- Thyself, thy neighbor, thy brother, thy lover, thy heart is thy mother. My heart, not me, is a part of me. It is other. I am other. Some wounds never heal. They fester. They burn. They create flash floods, rivers of acid rain. As snow on ground, the sizzling evaporation freezes out all sounds. The cold melts down. The silence is an echo. Fire fizzles out. Rain only can protrude this absence of all things.
expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both
cleanse you.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]
Dehydration:
Some things are meant to undo you. Some things are meant to be undone. If only you could have held tighter, you would have been the one- to be let go, to tie together, to fish bones from the sea. You had only a moment. Now the moment is done.
I remember a hand. It was my favorite hand in the world. I had closed my fingers around its own so many times before that they felt like a part of my skin; we were the same temperature. I used to fall asleep with this hand wrapped around my own. I convinced myself every night that if I could manage to hold tight then it would be there in the morning. It never was.
Ashes float through snow peaked mountains, down glacial rivers, and beneath a Scottish temple tree. As rivers build current and drain into oceans, memories sink beneath the shore. They call out from below- a siren song. They beg to be held. They want to taste your flesh. They want to drown you in their beauty. If you listen, they will reach out their paws and you will follow short. Only cold can be felt from so far beneath the sun. But sometimes, you want to go under. You want to sink. You want to lose sight of the shore. And you smile when it’s done.
the hard
season
will
split you
through.
do not
worry.
you will
bleed
water.
do not
worry.
this is
grief.
your face
will fall
out and
down
your
skin
and
there
will be s-
corchin-
g.
but do
not
worry.
keep
speaking
the years
from
their
hiding
places.
keep
coughing
up smo-
ke from
all the
deaths
you have
died.
keep the
rage
tender.
because
the soft
season
will
come.
it will
come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both
hands in
your
chest.
up all
night.
up all of
the
nights.
to drink
all
damage
into
love.
– __________
[nayyirah waheed]