Pray for Ease // Write & Breathe
I’ve never told this part of my story. You may know that I lived in Somalia for 3 years, but what I never mentioned is that I was on antidepressants for a good year out of those 3. After I quit smoking weed (Alhamdulillah), I got really manic and couldn’t sleep. My body is really sensitive, so anything I put into it has a great effect on me. Looking back, it makes sense that I would have such a strong reaction to a drug that
I guess I was kinda hoping that whats-her-name would read this post and know that it was her loss, not mine. How tragically teenage angsty. …
This morning I submitted something. It wasn’t anything new, just the first page of my memoir. It wasn’t for publishing, just for free critique from a publishing house. I can’t argue with that; it was a very low risk endeavor and the reward is free advice, at the very least. I like that. I like when the writing process feels easy and un-daunting. Were all things but that simple! After I got to work today, which was after I dropped off my sisters and my
In the night I watch television to help me fall asleep, or I watch television because I cannot sleep. …
Last week I couldn’t sleep because terrorists were driving through my neighborhood. The Klan drove in broad daylight across the city. No one was arrested because the people tasked with arresting them are also their cousins. And so, really, do black lives matter? …
This picture was taken on May 17th, 2018, a few days after I moved from Mankato to Minneapolis to try and make it, whatever that means. …
“You’re very self-invalidating; you give up very easily. You feel defeated all the time,” said my former therapist. He’s right, you know. But maybe that’s why I don’t go to his office anymore. He’s right, and I feel defeated right now. Right now all I have is this jumble of feelings in my throat that keep me staring at the wall. I get so ahead of myself that I look back at my own body, as if my soul has already escaped. I gotta run
In Somalia, and Somaliland, weed is not hard to find. Most Westerners are shocked to hear that. That’s not surprising, because most Westerners are unable to imagine a world outside the West. Sadly, most people from the Global South who move to the West end up taking on that same mindset. The West is ruthless in its ideological maneuvering. It slithers its way into your conscious without your ever noticing. More and more, day by day, you become what the West wants you to become, until one day you look up and see a different person staring back in the morning mirror. Unrecognizable. …
I wish I could see past my own pain to see the pain of others, especially when I cause that pain. But as it stands, all I can feel is the burden of my blight. To be born borderline, ah. If only I could show you with a flashlight. …
I think it’s important to remember that life isn’t guaranteed. As easy as it is to fall into autopilot, to be deluded into thinking we’ll live forever, the reality is that we will not. …
40 choppers like I’m Rambo. …
In response to a NYT article about the recent Quebec ban on religious symbols that’s forced Muslim women to choose their religion or their jobs: “Perri Ravon, a lawyer who has worked on two of the lawsuits against the ban, said that at least for now, “the law is disproportionately affecting Muslim women because the hijab is an outwardly visible religious symbol.” ====Of course it is, that’s what it was designed to do. We all know Islam is the target for this ban, and Muslim
“Where dead men sleep in palaces, surely the living must be living in paradise.” …
but won’t ever get to realize that dream – If you’re black in this country – And a third of your mind is behind the keyboard …
Sometimes the words feel like mango strands in my veins. …
Won’t you love me, black? Love me and I’ll love you back. …
Tell me about irrelevancy? That’s irrelevant. Tell me about growth? I’m in it. Tell me about… 9707 9th Pl SW, APT 101, Seattle, WA, 98106? That’s in my memory. Tell me how many cigarettes you smoked on the front balcony? Enough that there are still Newport butts littering the hedge bushes. Tell me about the King County Public Housing employees that came around every morning to pick up those butts? I’d see them coming out the window, and feel a guilty shame, and when they left,
That’s the only color you’ll find in Seattle. Splattered brains on sidewalks. Also, the bright neon orange of King County Corrections jumpsuits. It’s a bad place to be, black. It’s a bad place to be, full stop.
…
I don’t know what this work is, or what it’ll turn into. I just know that it’s here, it’s something which needed to come from me. And I haven’t walked away from it. The format has changed, and I don’t want to peg it down as anything, per se. I just want to make it, bro. I just want to get published. I know that’s not going to solve any problems for me. I know it won’t make things better. I know that it won’t
I’m from Seattle where people drown in the rain, heads tilted back, eyes cloudy with the grey of the sky. In Seattle, we cry so many tears that they evaporate on our face and turn into clouds and produce the rain that is responsible for everyone being so depressed and crying on the back of the bus all the time. …
I’m watching a man think about sitting on a frozen bus bench. He just had his morning coffee? He’s got one AirPod in, just one. He just lit his morning cig. Just one. Like Nas? All he needs is one mic, one cig, one blunt to live. OK. Tell me something real, now. I had a dream last night and it is said in my tradition that dreams should not be shared, good or bad, even to your closest family. We not family? Close enough.
the rain has entered me intravenously. …
“Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. When you are honest to your feelings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life. The relation of you to your language gains power. The relation of you to the triggering subject weakens.” Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town It’s not about the subject which triggers you but about the language you
I feel so alone in my writing. What I expected is what I got. And when I go to wokshop ever weak, it is with dread. Every week I am filled with dread. Last night, I tore up my own writing. Only because their comments were superimposed on top of my words. To hell with these white people, sick of them. And their comments. Are like. Like an emptiness that won’t go away. Like: I’m writing for the reader. I don’t agree with that. I write
The people who feel most entitled to live also feel most entitled to talk. From what I’ve seen, white people don’t hesitate to speak up in class. To ask for extra sugar at a café. To submit their writing for publishing. Isn’t it interesting how they’ve been conditioned to know that whatever they say is valid and accepted and true from birth? Isn’t it interesting. I am in a creative nonfiction workshop that’s full of white people. I can hear them now, their voices, crowding
Nowadays I dissociate more than ever before. The last year has been one dissociative leap. I just kind of stare off, bro. Feel like I don’t even exist. Or that the emptiness inside me is greater than I can fathom. 20,000 fathoms deep, I’m somewhere in there. Under all the empty dark space. What does that even mean? I got to this point where every sentence I write, I’m starting to question. I hear people’s critiques. I hate people’s critiques. I want to highlight that
“Sometimes its very intense and I walk – I mean, I write a sentence and I jump up and run outside or something; it sort of beats you up.” – Toni Morrison My assignment in class was to engage with Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, having read that book over and over since last year, but I couldn’t bring myself to mimic his style. I resonate with a lot of what he speaks on: the inviolability of blackness in this
I just came back from a road trip to Toronto, CA with about 25 young Somali brothers from the Twin Cities. It was great. I’m not a journalist so I’m going to avoid giving you a point-by-point breakdown of what all happened. Instead, I’ll show you what I felt & learned. First, I learned the importance of sacrificing personal comfort for the communal good. Taking responsibility for your fellow brothers in Islam is an underrated concept. After all, the foundation of this religion is working
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror on the freeway this morning. My eyes were defeated. Low and red. …
Which is fine, or whatever, except that scared white people are quick to call the police, and the police, as we all know, are quick to draw like a wild west cartoon character named McGraw. …
Wake up to the sound of wildebeest snorting on the Saranghetti; smell pure air; feel the dew on the tent as you step onto the cold grass, listening to the boiling chai as the sun crests. Watch that same sun set in Eyl, and fall asleep nearby, and wake up before sunrise, and pray, and just sit there for an hour or two, listening to the seagulls, watching the smoke rise as the sun evaporates the water on the shore. Rent a beach house in
America plucked your eyes out, Somalia gave them back. America stifled your soul, Somalia breathed it back. …
I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, that she didn’t have to cry anymore. …
I don’t think I’m really real, or really here, or really anything, really. But my [physical] tells me otherwise. …
I’ve been really interested in performance lately. The various ways that we are made to perform. Performance as an unavoidable game. They say that games are for kids. Being an adult, I’m realizing more and more, is about playing games you have no choice but to play. In my early college years, my uncle once told me, “you have to play the game. I know it sucks, but that’s the only way you get ahead in this place.” At the time, I was hard pressed
White faces, white facesall I see are white facesstaring back with all that hatredwhite faces, white faceswhy so racist?White faces, a spell on me, white faces, no pedigreewhite faces, muppet lips, pulled tight like white skin, in the sunlet it ripWhite faces, white facesoh how these white facescause me grief, cause me woewon’t let me be, can’t let me gowhite faces, white facesgot me contemplatingwhite faces, white faces,Dawg, why you still hatinHating me, hating mewhite faces, white facesP E N I T E N T
But sometimes we get in the way of our own saving. …
The thing about poetry is that anyone can appreciate any poem, but certain poems are meant for certain people. …
Nobody wants to be used. …
You know, I used to want to work at hospitals, back in the day, because I found hospital folks were generally more empathetic than other folks. I now work at a hospital and I’m finding that, one – our dreams rarely look like dreams when they become reality and, two – not everyone who works at a hospital is there because they want to help people. I guess the thing that drew me to hospitals was because it was a place where I’ve often felt
– just give me a cloud of protection to hide in – To hide from the world but the world is Still me, running from the farm Still me, when I found the white horse \\ beside a brown picket fence Still me Languid in the rain Sparking my bic, un-finding flame Still me Staring into the eyes of the horse And I am the horse And the horse is hurt But the horse is not alone The horse is not alone Not alone, not
If you know anything about me, you know that Claudia is one of my favorite living writers. Her approach to poetry, to writing in general, and how she finesses her subject matter with such a considerate touch really moves me to better my own writing. There are many things I enjoy about Rankine’s work. It’s poetry, but it looks like prose. I love nonfiction, and her work reads as such. But it’s not. Each sentence works on a deeper level. If you read through her
So I was watching Donnie Darko the other day. That movie came out towards the end of high school. At the time, I was questioning the unfairness of this rat race. It hurt me to go through the motions, but I had no choice. My parents put a roof over my head, loved me unconditionally; they wouldn’t let me just give up. Even though I had stopped trying, I was still going through the motions, for their sake. But, you know. That’s life. Now, Donnie
In the heart of darkness, the darkest parts of the night, of our life, is when the light to fight back is found. Life will sometimes throw you for a loop, and no one can save you but yourself. By you, of course, I mean me. When I say you, I’m talking about myself, because there is more that connects you and I than either one of us would like to believe. Here’s a fun fact: Shaiye isn’t even my real last name. It’s my
What am I but a function of time? Graphed over a pie chart. Yesterday was great. If I could investigate the surface level things in my life, I wouldn’t have much to write about. Or would I? How much is surface, anyway, and who determines that. What is structure. What is form. What is style. To write with style, to write at all, takes gumption. Takes time. Time. I’m still racing against time, and I don’t know where it will end. I mean, obviously,
Winter. I feel, the blues, coming on. I mean; they’re already here. Been here. Been had. Might could. And then? To be had is every nightmare’s dream. To become something greater than one ever hoped to be – the unattainable quotient. Something is not adding up. All of this is temporal matter. It’s not grey it’s gray. It’s seatttle city skies. It’s chaples and steeple chases. It’s the heaviness of the clouds, pressing down with pressure. Pressuring down on pipes. And they burst. Like
4 AM – Rawdah, Masjid An Nabbawi, Madinah Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia. As I handed the Lebanese brother to my left a coconut-flake covered date, he looked me in the eye and said, “Fi Jannah, Insha Allah.” In Heaven, Lord Willing. I don’t know what heaven looks like, but if that’s not the closest I’ve gotten to it on Earth, I don’t know what is. I just spent two weeks in Saudi Arabia and now I’m back in America. The transition is proving to be jarring,
Michael Jordan represents hope to a lot of people. I think his motivation came from an unshakeable inadequacy lodged deep within his psyche. No matter how hard he tried, Mike could never meet his own standards. While that would be enough to discourage most people, it only made him work harder. Mike saw impossibility but still worked towards reaching the unattainable. Mike thought of failure as a fate worse than death. A personal failure was greater to Mike than a natural disaster. To fail for
When I reflect on the discussions we’ve held in this course, a few things come to mind. First, that I enjoy writing, talking about writing, and learning about other people’s approaches to writing. One of the main reasons that we write is to be understood; by ourselves, by our family, by society. Understanding how people view writing helps me understand how I view myself. Writing is an exploration of self, and exploration of others’ writing is one of the only ways to understand how we
But how can I think about my own happiness when Trump wants to bring lynching back and I’m just trying to figure out where in this world I belong. Where can I raise kids that won’t be taught to hate themselves? Where can I live without the fear of death hanging onto my thoughts like coffee on the breath of everyone at a 5am A.A. meeting. And what about Dennis Hof, the dead brothel owner who was posthumously elected to a political office in Nevada,