tears of joy overflow and in my heart lives an echo I wish I could muffle. an echo so bright that it blinds me as I wake in the mornings. I send out letters into a doomed sea. and into that sea I throw these bottles filled with scrap papers, scribbled with prayers and hymnals from deep within the recess of my soul. and in these songs sit the hefty parts of me. parts that have never known softness and only sing jagged notes that cut up your kneecaps just from hearing them. songs sung purely out of hope, music born out of a desire. a desire that raged and rolled in me to be heard by The One I loved, most. The one with ears for my confessions. And hands for my innards. The one who lives gently placed over the space in my heart. The one who is closer to me than my own jugular. I vow forever to sing my tunes to you, as if this love in me is a well, never running dry.

how naive.

did I know that one day, I would grow and that my enthusiasm would fade? The verses suddenly turned flat and I began singing in keys that were short, stifled and mingled with a scent of betrayal. my beloved lost the taste for my voice. I was sure of it and that rancid sea no longer flowed your love back to me. indeed it was doomed from the beginning, a whisper tells me. this sea, my letters and all the faith in the world could not convince me that the ocean was not swallowing up my insides. Becoming deaf to the tune of your love, I wanted to give up. Love like this is eternal and it will never fade. To the heart of a believer, this is an indisputable fact though all of me quaked with denial.

My grandmother etched something into my soul when I was a child - that two steps towards the One warrants a love that rushes back, fifty-fold.

And now the tears that stain my cheeks burn because I know You. I know where you reside and how deep in me you live. How you stretch over my body and call it Home. I know you so deeply that to house doubt would be a disservice to all the love you have revealed in me. tadakhar//maktuub … you were never silent from me but taught me what tune to listen for. refined my ear and showed me how frivolous love letters are when ultimately, you have never left me. you, as the everlasting breath in my body and me as the canvas with which you varnish - a love affair I would do nothing to rid myself of.

I sing, again.