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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.