every sigh seems like a prayer
there are days when I wake up trembling
as if it’s just been yesterday
the thought that you are no more haunts me to the day
your face is almost dotted in my memory,
every sigh seems like a prayer, a longing to see you
I am pretty tired of the notion of one last chance to see someone
as if it would change anything, it’s just our one hope to make things right
hear what our ears what to hear, imagine what could have happened but
one chance wouldn’t change how things are, I wouldn’t have left my pain with you
I wouldn’t be any different with you, I would just be better around you
you you were the first one to make me feel proud of who I am
dews on eyelashes, maron flush olive green dune white memories
yesterday left like an empty promise
every summer vacation, the sun melts my skin
the longing for monsoon and you have been the same
Urban sadness
Sitting on the rusty bench located at the epicenter of the park,
I stare at little lives playing, dissolving cacophonous chaos into my coffee,
I left home, my skin has grown.
The city lights reflect off my lens as tears roll down.
Feeling left out amidst the world rushing into the metro.
Letting solitude get into your body like cold air from the AC seeping to your ankles.
Rattling wounds.
You stop at the station where life is a desert and your home is a mirage.
Urban sadness is forbidden destiny.
october is about waiting
wearing tights gets me in the mood for the holidays.
all-black clothing; soft skirts and long sleeves,
making hot chocolate with a friend on facetime
and pretending like she's still here, putting my
hair back and walking outside in a coat, because
it's finally, finally cold enough in california.
i'm waiting patiently: for a letter to come in the
mail, for inspiration to strike, for the milk to
heat up, for halloween night, for my friends to
come over, for the weather to chill, for a text back,
for christmas music and hanukkah parties, for
the BART train to arrive, for the lights in the theater
to dim, for my first kiss, for math test results, for
the winter months to come.
but it's a nice waiting, the kind that you can curl
up under the blanket and read a book, the kind
that comes an hour before the party starts when
everything is clean and you're setting out the food.
it's a calm kind of thrumming that runs through
my body in anticipation, a few butterflies in my
stomach that i know will dissolve when something
happens, the feeling i get when i know it will be soon-
so i just have to wait.
Happy Birthday Inertia Teens And My Journey with it.
These days when everything is online, memories fleet with time. Capturing every moment in fragments and retaining it forever is tough. I like to associate a memory with feeling. Last year this time of the year. I was hungry to make a change. I wanted to turn every sigh into a prayer to recover the pandemic and everyone’s mental health.
For a long time, my bio statement is a common girl with uncommon dreams. It’s just that I have different dreams than other teenage girls of my age. It’s always a struggle being authentic and putting yourself out online with an idea. And especially with the risk that it’s going to stay there forever. But online memories are circumstantial. People remember the worst and forget the best.
Some lavender candles aroma surround my room like it did last year when I wanted to light a match in the storm. I wanted to be that little spark everyone needed. If that one idea never came to me. I can’t fathom how my life would be today.
What if our ideas were ideas. We might not have smartphones or the internet or you wouldn’t see skyscrapers concealing lovely stars. We never know.
The veins of my ideas were my words. As soon as I learned writing my passions branched out of it. My main folder on PC is titled writing which has subfolders. This basically explains everything I am till now. So I am writing my excitement and feelings. It’s the OG thing I did.
It’s one year of Inertia teens, a mental health initiative by teenagers for educating youth through vivid discussions, literary magazines, YouTube videos, and much more. It’s a new show called Teen Talks that is going to be out today on World Mental Health Day and our 1st Birthday. https://youtu.be/lPu4nxeAJXw
However, this post is not for bragging. It’s showing all the hard work I am proud of. It wasn’t a cakewalk. It was in fact a rollercoaster of emotions. I learned everything from scratch which is pretty hard especially with other priorities like school, writing, designing, etc. I am learning to appreciate myself a little more. This is one of the first steps.
On an ending note, one of my favorite artists once said, “The world’s not perfect but it’s not that bad if we have each other and that’s all we have.” I am so thankful to you all for being such an important part of me and my growth. Please continue to support me!
Thanks :)
Samina
green light
it's happening again!
my mind is running away with itself
i can't make it stop!
i don't know what my reality is anymore-
i'm calling it the daisy effect
nice to meet you, i'm jay gatsby
except i don't have an excuse-
i never went off to war
i never got my heart broken, not really.
she's floating away again, quick tie her down
i reach for her ankle but she doesn't notice
her head's already in the clouds
she's become an impossibility,
a future core memory
that i lose as soon as i imagine it.
an accumulation
my anguish doesn't gather in my bones and weigh me down
like mary shelley said, but i will defend it.
instead it layers on my face like dead skin
no matter how many times i wash with warm water
and apply moisturizer in the sunlight by my window
or if i take one of those facial blades and try to scrape
my grievances off, they won't budge.
but i've decided that's what is beautiful about my face-
the accumulation of anguishes, but also joys.
i can see where the lines will be when i'm older
and i note that they look like my great grandmother's
laugh lines. i can see the outline of my nose at a
certain angle where it looks like my mother's.
the circles under my eyes acquire a certain scaly effect
and it reminds me of the time i said my mother had
the eyes of a wise old dragon- and i couldn't understand
why she was upset when i thought it was the coolest
thing ever to have purple under your eyes.
all the places i've ever been, all the air i've ever breathed
layered on my skin. i can see it clearly in the sunlight, the
reds of my impurities, the freckles where the fairies kissed me,
a stray eyelash, a crooked scar that's invisible to everyone but me.
it's not perfect (i have to remind myself that no one's is) but
it's mine, it contains everything that makes me tangible and
visible. i'll never know what i truly look like in another's eyes
but maybe it's better that way.
on the first day of october
today i went for a walk
along the coast, it was beautiful and blue-
there were gardens with lovely flowers
red rocks and weathered trail signs.
i listened to music on the car ride
there and back, i listened to all of
folklore, the whole album, twice through.
i had a chocolate donut this morning
after i walked to the post office
to drop off a letter i've been meaning to send.
i checked out a book at the library,
one i've been meaning to read.
i answered twenty-three pointless questions
about the play othello, and studied
for a math test i'm pretty sure i'm going to fail.
a standard sunday for me, except for one thing-
all day i've been thinking how you love flowers and
the color blue, how you hate chocolate (i'll never
forgive you for that one), how you told me i would
love folklore, how you said you were going to
write me so many letters i'd get sick of them
(i'd never), how you quoted mary oliver to me,
and lemony snicket, how you said my favorite
historical figures needed therapy, and how you
stayed up all night finishing the economic essay
i finished last week, and you're probably studying
for that math test right now, except you're going to
pass it and i won't.
i've been thinking of how your side profile looked
while you were driving me home as the sun set,
how you looked a me while i tried a matcha latte
for the first time, and how you put your hands on
my shoulders and moved me away from a tall guy
who seemed intent on elbowing me in the face.
i also thought about how your eyes lit up when you
talked about the egyptians measuring their painted
figures, how you sat on the roof during a storm alone
and smiled at me when i went completely still because
of my crippling fear of wasps.
i also think i fell just a tiny bit in love with you when you
said you had a wax sealing kit, or hated hot weather, or
picked up a cat from a random sidewalk in the city and
named him mouse or when you insisted that you take me
out to breakfast for eggs benedict because it's your favorite
food ever, but it's probably too early to tell.
5 things I learnt as a teen writer
Hello,
So I have been posting a piece on Prose every Saturday. This week I have come up with something new. It's similar to a video essay. The video is titled, '5 Things I learnt as a teen writer' in which I will be discussing diversity, mental health, submitting to literary magazines and publications, writing competitions, and much more. It's been almost 1 and half-year since I have been writing online and hence I learnt many things the hard way. I hope you will like it and lmk if it's something you would like to see more.
https://youtu.be/FMtq0BbqNtc
xx
Samina
brimstone/microchips
but if jesus is still
awake i wonder if he'd tell me
at what age
he disconnected his
gmail from his dad's
and if it came out of a place of
anger or if he just turned eighteen
one day and decided to
change his password.
but if he stays up late like i do, i'm
already feeling this sense
it's
probably not the latter.
when i was nine years old i
crashed my grandmother's laptop.
do you think she remembers this
every time
she searches for youtube?
probably not, but i do.
i've written the same ghost
story book over and over again, it's
the one
i'd steal from the scholastic
book fair and hide; it's
the childhood bible
that i never picked up.
have my parents ever thought that maybe
their child is mad at them?
is everyone's heavenly daddy
immune to this, am i
the system error? is my father's
hallowed name restored?
i have been thinking this
in every different brain in this body
for months, i cannot
close my eyes to sleep
without seeing a hand coming to pluck me from this
hell and drop me into another one.
when i was nine years old i
let my friend run me over
on my new bike.
does she think of this when she
wins races now at college?
i still care.
it still lives in my mind,
a feeling of fire and tangling of
legs.
and if god didn't
leave his son i wonder if things
would have turned out different for every other
kid in the brown green earth,
because if you can't even get the attention of your
dad as some sub-human
sub-god
person thing
then what the
living hell am i supposed to do
when all mine cares about is my
geometry grade and
old gmail
and the search history i've
deleted hours ago?
i hope i can still find it
sometime after this, if it can't
seem to dig itself into a grave.
they say once you do something it will
always be out there so i've
grown up hoping
everything is forever.
that my best friend never dies. that
my grandmother never dies.
that my childhood bike can
decompose into the earth
and see me again someday. someday, maybe...
when i was nine i found a dead cat on the walkway near my house.
does god plan this when he makes the animals?
i'm sure he probably does.
i’ll let go for you; it hurts, i know
every other word is an echo; memories burned on hollow bones
life's an endless spiral. i'm not crazy, i know; but stability hates me
& it's crushing me. i've lost over twenty pounds in months less
than your fingers can hold; my mother's screaming, saying silence
can't be your diet. rub the makeup off my face, ask me six months ago
i thought i know where'd i go. whisper my name now, i'll cry.
nothing's the same yet there's still an outlining. you cannot love
a broken girl; she doesn't want you tumbling down her unpaved roads.
plant a tree for the memories, care for it as your own; perhaps one day
she'll be there to watch it grow.
what keeps reality frigid, is knowing it was real; that the heart bleeds,
even if time dries it out. selfishly i ask for a moment, a dime to hold
in a future when she's stitched up enough to be considered as whole;
not a fantasy ending - she never quite believed in those, just a
friendly reminding, of a time you were there when she needed a hand to hold.
you've become a piece of her soul; but you need to let her go.