[dVerse] November 05 - Wildly Constant

Wildly Constant

The wind has been moving things around again.

A dry leaf under the door.
A receipt from last Tuesday.
A newspaper folded open
to a face I have no reason to remember.

I collect them.
The leaf goes into the bin.
The receipt, into a drawer.
The face follows me to the kitchen.

Some thoughts have no use for doors.
They enter through the smallest available gap,
take a seat,
begin again where they left off.

I can be measuring rice
when an old conversation resumes.
I can be washing a cup
when a possible disaster requests consideration
from every available angle.

There is a particular kind of fear
that makes a person stay indoors
even when the room has become unbearable.

I have called it cowardice.
I have called it hibernation.
I have tried other names.
I have watched the days gather outside
like people waiting for a house to open.

Sometimes I try to leave one condition of mind
and return to the body.

There is the floor.
The weight of the feet.
The cup in my hand.
The ordinary business of being located somewhere.

But even this return acquires an audience.

The characters are watching
the other me leave the scene.
They watch her become the one
who is supposed to be here,
the one with a body, a family,
a room that apparently belongs to her,
and several people who know
what she ought to do with it.

Their watching brings me back
to the scene I was trying to leave.

I have to begin again.

Outside, a branch keeps knocking
against the window.
I cannot tell whether it is asking to enter
or trying to get out.

I look up the phrase: sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Hosea, eighth century BCE. Prophet of doom.
A warning about what a people cultivate
and what eventually grows from it.

I read about the destruction in the book,
then the promises of restoration,
then the tradition of Hosea's prayer,
the doom it was said to avert.

I have been reading about wind
for longer than I intended.

The phrase assumes a field,
a hand scattering seed,
some relationship between action and consequence.

What does the wind assume?

It moves the neighbour's washing,
pollen, ash, the fine remains of a roof.
It carries things that never agreed
to become part of its journey.

I return to the room.

There is the family,
the familiar arrangements,
the instructions disguised as concern,
the small permitted dimensions of a life.

Reality has its own weather.
It presses against the skin
with the dull persistence of furniture
that cannot be moved.

The first job was a bad room
with bad people in it.
The salary barely qualified as money.
I left with the peculiar exhaustion
of someone who has been underpaid
in more ways than one.

The second job felt like a discovery.
I liked the work.
I remember the relief of finding it,
the small astonishment
of being somewhere I wanted to work.

The work is still good.
The people have found other ways
to make it difficult.
The new contract arrived
with the old number in it.

No increase.
Same amount. Three contracts.

I read the figure again.
Numbers are very good at staying still
while everything around them deteriorates.

My father sends me job openings.
He knows the kind of work I would dislike.
He knows the kind of work I am absolutely unqualified for.
I think he knows I know this.
Still, the links arrive,
one after another,
as though the misery of this job
might eventually make his choices
resemble mine.

My sister and I do not speak.
Sometimes I think of how much
she has inherited from him.
She got almost everything.
I got the scream.

My mother and I are like
two people drowning in the same well.
We keep reaching for each other
because there is no one else
within reach.

Sometimes a hand is a hand.
Sometimes it is the thing
that pushes the other under.

Even that, perhaps,
in a reduced quantity.
A quarter-strength inheritance,
diluted somewhere between
his throat and mine.

His voice could occupy a house.
Mine has to calculate
whether it is safe to leave the room.

I have been calling this fear.
Cowardice, sometimes.
The family has other names for it,
I imagine.
There are so many names
for a daughter who does not move
when someone points towards a door.

I had thought returning would mean
the end of the investigation.
Instead, I am here,
trying to determine which part of the day
I am allowed to inhabit.
The branch knocks again.
I listen.
The wind has not answered.
It has never needed to.

~ Oizys.

Wrote this for dVerse OpenLinkNight # 419 on 05 Nov 2026. I am super late, as usual, but I took my sweet time and somehow turned a pseudo-rant + stream of consciousness into something resembling a poem.

Some notes, echoes and listening.

• Hosea 8:7 — “Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” - The verse belongs to a prophetic warning about Israel's conduct and its consequences. The wind in the poem begins with this image of sowing and reaping, then moves beyond the logic of cause and consequence.
• Hosea 14 — A promise of restoration - A countercurrent to the destruction and judgement elsewhere in the book.
• “The Wind” — Yusuf / Cat Stevens (1971) - A song about listening to the wind and the soul, and the uncertainty of where one will end up.
• “Listening Wind” — Talking Heads, Remain in Light (1980) - A darker political song about alienation, intrusion, and resistance. Its wind carries a very different history from the one in this poem.
• Listen! The Wind — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1938) - An account of the Lindberghs' 1933 transatlantic survey flight, in which wind and weather become practical forces that determine what can and cannot happen.

september 7th. 1:40 AM - 4:05AM. sunday night - monday morning.

september 7th. 1:40 AM - 4:05AM. sunday night - monday morning.

i try to write and fail. i set in my mind to start a blog post one day covering whatever has happened and then the distance between my set mind and unwilling body becomes larger and larger. fueled by disgusting, dangerous intrusive thoughts; disheveling, deranged maladaptive daydreaming; daunting reality; destructive environments; dull work; and my little, thin, disappointing life choices hitting me from all ways everyday. i keep thinking i will write when my head becomes a little quieter. a stupid bargain. my head has apparently interpreted 'quiet' as an unconstitutional demand. since i was twelve. or ten.

so far, since my last weblog update, nothing big has happened. i have been swamped with work, one coworker with her only true achievement of weaponized incompetence has been a menace trying to maneuver me. an old colleague has come back who would put the former colleague's maneuvers to shame. recently they collaborated to frustrate me to oblivion for a simple task of nomenclature i asked their support for. nomenclature. naming things. apparently we have reached a point in my working life where the naming of things can become a small bureaucratic war. maybe adam had it easy. one of my other coworkers has moved on to another project and we don't talk anymore. no bad blood though. so, i miss her companionship and camaraderie a lot. my manager is... well a manager. present in the metaphysical sense, i suppose. emails exist. meetings occur. managerial substances move through the atmosphere. nothing particularly useful comes out of this weather system. her habit of not paying attention to issues that i escalate and then over-dumping it on me last-minute has been aggravating me.

this coupled with my mother trying to persuade me to apply for jobs my father wants me to apply for and pushing me everyday while i try my best to survive. a job tab open. another job tab open. some examination. some vacancy. some thing father heard about from someone somewhere and therefore it must now become a possibility i am morally obliged to want. i sometimes think half my life has been other people arriving at my door carrying futures for me and becoming offended when i don't immediately crawl inside them.

meanwhile, i have been exploring the depths and scepters of communist-socialist history from USSR, Cuba, Congo, and then whichever country/person/party/split/revolution one footnote throws me into next. because, naturally, one cannot simply read one thing. one thing has a name inside it and the name has a history and the history has a disagreement and the disagreement has fourteen people who despised each other over the correct route towards liberation and suddenly it is 2 a.m. it all started with watching some photographs, speeches, and interviews of fidel castro and che guevara. its so random. my interest was randomly piqued about their friendship. so many people of who only i knew their names and now after reading more and more, i have been gaining so much understanding of the world functioning, society, human oppression, the bizarre plumbing underneath things i had previously accepted as just... things. why certain states like the u.s., israel, france, britain behave[d] the way they did. why certain countries like afghanistan, iran, congo, palestine became laboratories for everybody else's "ideology" and greed. why a person i had once stored in my head as [NAME FROM HISTORY] apparently spent their entire life walking through an argument which has outlived them. how land, labour, money, empire, class, female body, and violence keep appearing in each other's family photographs. 

and there are all these embarrassing little recognitions. 
oh. 
ohhh. 
wait. 
that is what that was? 
and, the more i read and understand, the more there is to know. 

i knew things, obviously. or knew the school books' embalmed versions of things. names in paragraphs. revolutions reduced to dates, countries made into shapes on maps, dead people flattened into two ideological sentences which could be underlined before an exam. and now. now they keep acquiring organs. motives. failures. uglinesses. contradictions. enemies who had enemies who later became friends with somebody's enemies. sometimes i feel terribly stupid. sometimes i feel like i have found a trapdoor underneath the world and instead of climbing through it properly i am crouching there with forty tabs open. 

and then there are things i come across which don't leave me alone afterward. i keep thinking about the letter ayatollah ruhollah khomeini sent to mikhail gorbachev. what a strange historical object to encounter at 1 or 2 or whatever a.m. on a laptop. khomeini writing to the leader of the soviet union in 1989, basically looking at the ideological illness of the USSR while it was still standing and telling gorbachev that whatever he was searching for could not be solved by turning westward and that the problem went deeper, into materialism itself, and then inviting him to look towards islam. there is something almost eerie to me about letters sent towards collapsing things by people who do not yet know exactly what shape the collapse will take. or perhaps they know a shape. i mean, people knew the shape of the collapse of ussr will take. everyone thinks they know the shape. a letter travelling from tehran to moscow. gorbachev receiving it. me finding it nearly four decades later because i apparently cannot read normally anymore.

and samantha smith. oh samantha smith. a ten-year-old schoolgirl from maine becoming frightened of nuclear war and doing the remarkably uncomplicated thing adults somehow make impossible: she wrote to yuri andropov and asked him, essentially, are you going to have a war? why? do you want to conquer us? and he wrote back. then invited her to the soviet union. and she went. eleven years old and she went. her courage, oh. i don't mean courage in that inflated quotation-image way people use the word after somebody has already become safely historical. i mean physically. a little girl getting on a plane and going to the country she had been taught enough fear about to write its leader asking whether he planned to destroy hers. walking around there. meeting soviet children. seeing them as children. allowing herself to find out something by going near it. i think perhaps this is why she keeps needling me. because i have spent so much of my life frightened from stationary positions. i research. i imagine. i rehearse. i construct the entire geography of danger and escape inside my skull and then continue sitting exactly where i was sitting. samantha just wrote the fucking letter. then she went. there is also something unbearable about knowing how enormous the machinery around her was. reagan. andropov. nuclear arsenals. propaganda. governments manufacturing each other into monsters large enough to justify more weapons. then this child entering the thing with the embarrassing question adults had buried beneath strategy: if neither of you says you want war then why are you preparing so enthusiastically for one?

children are humiliating like that. sometimes they accidentally uncover the entire fraud because nobody has taught them yet which ridiculous premise everybody has agreed not to question. maybe, because children have no dignity?

and then, years later, the ussr ends. not even necessarily the grand geopolitical collapse as it usually gets presented to us with flags lowering and maps changing colour and commentators declaring the end of eras. i mean the actual strange administrative lastness of it. here's the transcript hosted on .su. the supreme soviet. december 26, 1991. people sitting in a room and having to conduct a meeting while the state to which the meeting belongs is disappearing. imagine having an agenda for the end of your country. there is something so sickly human about bureaucracy surviving until the final second. a. t. alimzhanov is presiding. there are speeches. formal language. the soviet flag over the kremlin has already been lowered. the first and last president of the ussr has resigned. this enormous political project which contained generations of struggle, revolution, liberation, belief, terror, sacrifice, bureaucracy, war, childhoods, songs, queues, science, prisons, apartments, dead people, living people, millions upon millions of ordinary breakfasts has arrived somehow inside parliamentary procedure. and near the end alimzhanov wishes them a happy coming new year. says they will meet again, if not there then somewhere else. somewhere else. god. then he asks deputy nosov if he wants to speak. nosov does. "dear comrades!" and he says their decisions are illegal and invalid. that only the congress of people's deputies of the ussr has the right to decide them. (noise in the room.) that parenthesis. i just cannot get over nosov'slast cry and the parenthesis. a whole country has reached its grammatical ending and somebody responsible for producing the transcript has to put the noise somewhere, so history receives nosov's last cry and (noise in the room.) then the presiding officer essentially says the meeting is closed. all good. all good! and that is it. how does anything end like this? perhaps everything does and afterward we manufacture the ceremony. i don't know why i assumed the death of a state would know it was the death of a state while it was happening. maybe i expected history to possess better dramatic instincts. thunder. somebody saying the correct final sentence. an orchestra somewhere understanding its cue. but there they were discussing procedure, objecting to legality, exchanging new year wishes. people still had somewhere to go afterward, presumably. coats to put on. somebody must have been hungry. somebody perhaps had plans for new year's. the ussr ceased to exist and everybody still had to get home.

this is the kind of thing that has been happening to my brain lately. history has become less historical the more history i read. which is inconvenient. i used to think time made events solid. now everything seems terribly porous. countries look permanent until suddenly you are reading the transcript of their final meeting. ideologies look like enormous impersonal nouns until you find somebody's letter. the cold war becomes arrows on a map until an eleven-year-old girl goes to summer camp. and people become names until you look too long. then they become people again. terrible development for someone already prone to thinking about everything past the point of usefulness.

which, actually—

there was some new development around the people i was lurking around while i was flailing around the far-left internet and that kept some rooms of my mind occupied and took me in a ride to make me understand more and more of this weird political-internet underbelly i wrote about in the previous weblog. the suspected things, the people, people around those people, organisations, affiliations, accusations, who-followed-whom-before-who-unfollowed-whom, ideological genealogy being performed through instagram stories like some deranged family tree. i am saying development because i don't know what other word accommodates something simultaneously happening outside me and inside my already over-chewed suspicions. and of course every new thing made old things look slightly different. this is the irritating thing about learning. the furniture moves when you aren't looking.

something i dismissed three weeks ago develops a second head because now i know one additional name. somebody's old sentence becomes stranger. a photograph becomes worth staring at. a coincidence becomes either less coincidental or embarrassingly more ordinary. i go back. read again. search again. find another document. now i am staring at the internet like an auntie peeping from behind a curtain except the neighbourhood feud is ideological and half the neighbours may or may not be imaginary.

anyway.

while i have been doing all this extremely important work of becoming a poorly trained online archivist of everybody else's political lives, my own life has been throwing forms at me.

i have been selected for two more courses which i am attending, studying, working, giving exams, preparing capstone projects for every week, an old colleague has returned with a volunteer opportunity to help his organisation and a workshop from which i was rejected has come back to give me a place and expects me to submit a draft within upcoming days. rejection apparently has an appeals court. i don't think i felt any happiness though. not in an ungrateful manner. just exhausted manner. and, so much at once and i just remember my work contract ends the end of this month and i don't know if i want to survive. because surviving means facing the fact that i didn't procure any other work/contract. because surviving means i have to continue here. because surviving means i have to continue taking this humiliation while being a silent casualty of weaponized incompetence of others and ignored management with no one to take my side. because surviving means also facing the fact whether they will increase my fee or not, because the last time they did not increase at all.

and money is such a humiliatingly material thing. i can philosophise myself into dust but rent, salary, fees, contracts, loans, deposits, groceries, bills after bills after bills, bank accounts, applications... they remain stupidly solid and grow bigger. you cannot existential-angst your way into financial security. extremely inconsiderate of capitalism. no?

this month started with my father's birthday. i did not remember that it was until my father sent pictures of his office celebrating and my mother's & sister's wishes followed. mine didn't. i don't know what to do with this sentence so i will leave it there.

the week ended with a scuffle between my mother and my sister over some food my sister and i decided to order on friday night. saturday morning, well i woke up at 3 pm, it was an off day. i felt disgruntled with my mother too so we did not speak much. by the night, i had become sick. the whole day, intrusive thoughts of various unwanted worries and shame-laden memories, voices of abuser people kept assaulting me mentally and at late evening, as i sat to have my first meal of the day, dinner, after a shower, i got my period. perfect timing from the uterus. applause. although i should have predicted but i never learn. shame on me. i tried my best to not throw up and combust due to my headache. and today, my sister left to spend the night at her friend's house and said she will come back tomorrow. my mother was asleep when she left, so she had told me and asked me to pass it on, the message, as she had heard that my mother and i had majorly started speaking while i prepared my lunch. after which mother went to sleep. it was in the late evening when i told my mother and apologized that it had slipped my mind or else i would have said it sooner. she was sitting up and she sat for a minute. i think she wanted to share a look with me to start a conversation. but i delivered the message and quickly turned my head. she left the room. i did not have dinner tonight.

*

anddddd... i finally sit down to write.

some of my old existential angst and dread-like thoughts came back to me as a pang. i think they did the final push and made me start penning. maybe, nowadays, writing begins for me only when something becomes sufficiently unbearable that even maladaptive daydreaming cannot digest it anymore. then my fingers are handed the leftovers. 

i am still stuck in this room, on this chair, on this table, this laptop, this job, this city, this state, this country, this part of the world, this family, this community, this lineage that has made me such a misfit for itself and made sure i will carry this misfit-ness everywhere, in me, if i ever go. sometimes i wonder, if i can, ever? ...go? there has been so much going in my head for a person who has barely gone anywhere. sometimes i think, by now, we can all agree here, i have mistaken thinking about escape for escape itself. researching places. imagining rooms. imagining work. imagining myself walking in streets where nobody knows whose daughter i am. rehearsing the grocery shops. the window. a kettle. some ugly rented mattress. freedom apparently furnished in my head by a kettle. then i return, although i never left, and the chair is still underneath me.

i feel like folding into a crumpled paper, shrivel up to into non-existence. what ever is this life and where did i go so wrong in it? will there be a trial for this? for this cage that i have somehow domesticated myself for? will there be a judge, jury, executioner? what is the punishment for this? or do people who keep withdrawing into themselves eventually become so small in the world's eye that there is nobody left to even pronounce them missing? is that the punishment? if one keeps closing the door, then another door behind it, then another, does the world eventually accept the architecture and stop knocking? how long can somebody hide inside their own boundaries before everybody outside learns to walk around the shape where they used to be? is this how one gets forgotten? slowly enough to be alive for it? is this death?

i think... that is what scares me. disappearance has always sounded to me like an interesting event. somebody leaves. or, somebody dies. or maybe, somebody is lost. there should be a before and an after. but, i guess, there are disappearances which happen quite administratively. incrementally. nobody files anything. you answer fewer messages. your friendships become old chats you scroll through once in six months. coworkers move to other projects. somebody stops telling you something because last time you didn't answer properly. family learns which subjects will receive silence. you stop going out. people stop asking. and then one afternoon you discover the world has very politely adjusted to your absence while you were still technically occupying it. horrible. absolutely horrible. and abhorrent. isn't it?

i try to find life in me somewhere. i feel like i have sucked all my blood dry looking for life within me but alas, i feel i have died within this body. within it, many rooms. and i lied somewhere no one can find me. i keep searching for the dead body perpetually. lost. maybe that is why i keep writing rooms? room inside room inside room. closet acquiring closets. the miseritorial cot. this stupid chair. the same table. the house. the country. oh, this country. sometimes i don't know whether these are metaphors anymore. maybe i have been describing one architecture from different distances. zoom in: skull. zoom out: bedroom. zoom out: family. zoom out: community. state. country. world. somewhere between these scales a very small thing is lying down pretending to research communist history.

me, hello.

maybe i keep acquiring vocabulary because words can enter places my body cannot. ussr. cuba. congo. revolution. exile. struggle. bourgeoisie. liberation. organisation. all these enormous travelling words entering a room where their reader cannot even travel to the next city without first negotiating ten invisible borders. ridiculous arrangement. i know. and still i read.

this must mean something, i suppose. or i want it to. or i am just making it up for the sake of giving this miserable excuse of a blog update a closure. i feel there is still apparently some small scavenger inside the corpse collecting things. a name. a paragraph. an opportunity. another course. a workshop which rejected me and then returned. a volunteer project. some half-written weblog. maybe this creature is life. maybe life is giving it too prestigious a title. perhaps it is simply habit with a pulse.

i don't know. this is important.

sometimes i think of all the versions of me my daydreaming has manufactured and feel embarrassed that they have lived more than i have. they travelled. spoke. argued. loved people. left people. stood on stages. wrote books. had apartments. had political courage. had courage-courage. did revolutions. loved. built. they knew where to place their hands. they knew what to say when humiliated. they did not turn their head when their mother wanted to look at them. they knew when to speak up to their fathers. what a population. and here is their exhausted country of origin. i sit. the problem with imagining so many lives is that eventually your own begins looking like the rejected draft. annotations everywhere. [move.] [say something.] [apply.] [leave.] [eat.] [answer mother.] [finish work.] [become a person here.] and i keep ignoring editorial suggestions from reality. today's was: eat dinner. ignored that one too. i don't know where i am going with this. nowhere, presumably. geographically consistent with the rest of my life. haha! but perhaps i wanted a record that these days happened because days which happen entirely inside one room begin losing their borders. saturday becomes sunday because sleep said so. august becomes september because the computer corner changed numbers. father's birthday happens through photographs sent to a phone. somebody leaves a project and disappears. a contract approaches its end. blood arrives. mother leaves the room. sister goes to her friend's house. history happens magnificently elsewhere and time here passes through notifications.

and i am frightened that one day i will look back and discover i spent years waiting for my life to become sufficiently life-like before participating in it. what qualification does a life require before i agree that it has begun? another job? another city? another room? money? permission? courage? love? acceptance? when? how? why? me? when? i have asked when so many times that the word has become furniture too. perhaps that is what i am doing tonight. inventory. in this sad little store of mine called life.

chair: one.
table: one.
laptop: one.
body: allegedly one.
life: whereabouts unknown.

~ oizys.

camphor and control

i’ve been struggling to write about my father for as long as i can remember, like any other woman, any other daughter. then i saw a reel video by sarga_mmm [just some time ago while doomscrolling under my soft covers while spying on my mother snore hoping she doesn't wake up]. she captures the essence beautifully (soft, naïve even; i would’ve said it betok-elaan), but still, it caught the whole alphabet of my inner child’s begging, a to z. maybe that’s why it hit me the way it did, not as a poem or performance, but like a mirror shoved in front of me mid-breath. 

how strange that simple, uneven words can unearth what’s buried. i’ve written about love, and loss, and freedom, but never about him, not really. i always stopped just short of the truth, as if my pen got scared. maybe writing about him is like unlocking a room sealed years ago: air heavy, familiar, still smelling of camphor and control. 

that video made me notice how many versions of me lived inside his silence: the girl who waited for footsteps to fade before exhaling, the teenager rehearsing bravery in whispers, the woman who pretends she doesn’t flinch when someone raises a voice. ridiculous, patterned, real. i wonder if he knew... the tiny rebellions, the swallowed sentences, the high marks that weren’t pride so much as safety. and why, after all these years of living alone, paying my bills, choosing my life, my chest still tightens when someone says “papa.” 

maybe forgiveness isn’t a grand event but a slow undoing, one layer at a time. maybe this is me trying. not hating the fear, just acknowledging it, tracing its edges, learning its name. and somewhere between ache and understanding, i still want to ask him; softly, without trembling; “papa, कैसे हो?” not for an answer, but because saying it out loud feels like reclaiming the part of me that was too afraid to speak.

maybe the fear didn’t start as fear. maybe it became a habit, like folding bedsheets too neatly or rinsing cups twice. the house trained me to hear mood in the clink of keys, the weight of footsteps, the way a door shut half an inch faster. i got fluent in that language. i still am. some evenings, when the light turns the color of old brass, my shoulders climb on their own. the body remembers what the mind negotiates away. 

there were good days too, which is what makes it knottier. a mango sliced just right. a new pencil on the first day of term. a ride on the scooter where the wind slapped my cheeks and i forgot, for ten minutes, to be careful. these little mercies confuse the verdict. they soften the outline of the man and blur the edges of the rules. you’d think that would help. sometimes it does. other times it feels like a trap inside a kindness. 

i keep circling the question of fault like a stray dog around a closed bakery. was he cruel or simply unequipped. did he hold the world like a hammer and see every noise as a nail. nobody trained him in tenderness; men of that era were given belts and budgets and silence. i know this. i also know my knees learned the choreography of apology before my voice learned to say no. both truths sit in the same chair and won’t make room for each other. 

what i want now is smaller than forgiveness and somehow braver. i want the right to enter a room without shrinking. to speak a sentence to completion without scanning faces for weather changes. to laugh at full volume and not feel disloyal to an old version of myself. to put down the tray of chai, अख़बार, sugar in a steel katori and sit. simple verbs. sit. stay. breathe. 

today i tried something ordinary. i made tea and didn’t rush. let the kettle sing. i watched steam curl like handwriting i could almost read. i said “papa” into the empty kitchen and waited for the alarm in my chest. it came; prickly, fast; then loosened. i sipped. too sweet. i sipped again. no disaster. only the dissolving peppermint crystals getting louder. it felt like cheating fate. it felt like nothing. it felt like a door opening a quarter inch.

i’ve been thinking about the girl i was, the one who perfected invisibility. i want to take her to a fair and buy her that stupid neon balloon shaped like a rabbit. i want to let it go on purpose and watch her cry and then laugh at how silly it was to hold so tight. i want to teach her a better trick: hold your own hand first. 

if i ever have a daughter, i won’t be a saint; i’ll lose my temper and burn the dal and forget sports day. but i will not confuse fear with discipline. i will not call obedience love. 

somewhere in the middle of all this inventory receipts of pain, receipts of care, i find a thin place where the world softens. i don’t know what to do with it except keep standing there. i can’t rewrite childhood, but i can edit the margins of today. call it reparenting, call it late learning, call it me growing a spine that bends toward gentleness. i think of the women before me who stitched their mouths shut with duty and still sang lullabies. i think of the men who swallowed apologies until their throats turned to stone. i am tired of inheriting geology. 

so i will practice small sentences that make room in the air. “i’m not comfortable.” “please stop.” “i need time.” “i’ll visit next month.” “no.” i’ll let my no be a full stop, not a comma leading to an explanation. i’ll let my yes be chosen, not extracted. i’ll keep the old photographs because history matters, but i’ll put them in a box that doesn’t open by itself. 

and if a day comes when i can look him in the eye and ask, steady and clear, “papa, कैसे हो?” i hope i also remember to ask myself the same question, first. maybe the answer will be simple on that day. maybe it will be a paragraph. maybe it will be silence that doesn’t scare me. i can live with any of those. 

for now, i’ll end here, not because the story is finished, but because i am. i’ll wash the cup, switch off the light, and let the night be only night. tomorrow i’ll wake up with the same face, newer by a breath. and in that tiny newness, i will try again.

~ Oizys.

Endnotes:

1. “papa, कैसे हो?” — “Papa/Dad, how are you?”

2. “chai, अख़बार, katori” — chai = tea; अख़बार (akhbār) = newspaper; katori = small steel bowl.

NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 30th): She Who Burned Beautifully

From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Thirty): Wow, we made it, everyone! Today’s the final day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month. We hope you make it to the end of the day with thirty new poems under your belt. But even if you didn’t manage to keep up with the whole poem-a-day thing, we hope you had fun!

We’ll be back tomorrow with our final featured participant and some closing thoughts for the year’s challenge, but in the meantime, our featured participant for today is Catching Lines, who brings us an elegy for Janis Joplin in response to Day 29’s inspired-by-the-music-makers prompt.

Our final resource is MatterPort Discover, a site that lets you take virtual tours of all kinds of museums, ranging from the National Museum of Ireland to the Bicycle Museum of America.

Finally, here’s the last prompt of this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo (optional, as always)! In his meandering poem, “Grateful Dead Tapes,” poet Ed Skoog riffs on the eponymous tapes that he’s found in a secondhand store, remembering various instances of hearing the band, both live and in recording. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that also describes different times in which you’ve heard the same band or piece of music across your lifetime.

Happy writing!

Note: I almost gave up. And I tried my best to wrap this up without giving up this year. I will always come back to this.

She Who Burned Beautifully

(for the songs that found me when no one else did)

Oizys, mother of the sharpest silences: hear me now.

They played that song again—

the one that howls like a woman unspooling her bones

on marble floors too clean for grief.

I was thirteen, and I screamed.

At him.

At the godfather of my silence.

At the man who carved his name in thunder

and called it parenting.

That day, I tore through the wallpaper of obedience,

raised my voice like a temple bell,

and the song rose with me.

War drums.

Chords like broken bangles.

A voice that wasn’t mine but knew my rage

like a sister.

Years later, locked away in velvet cages

stitched with gold and expectations,

I escaped.

Not with a suitcase—no,

with nothing but a name on my tongue

that meant sorrow and sovereignty:

Oizys.

I walked through strange cities

where no one knew how to pronounce me,

but I played that same song,

a siren of survival,

and the walls of every hotel room shivered

as I danced like a girl unchained

but still carrying her rusted manacles in her purse

like relics.

The air smelled of cardamom and gasoline. My wrists still bore the red threads of home.

The third time I heard it,

I was on the floor of my own apartment,

cold tea beside me,

achievement collapsing like a palace made of sugar.

I whispered:

“I am not capable.”

The song didn’t disagree.

It hummed around me, ancient and cruel,

as if to say—

“Then be incapable.

But burn anyway.”

“Even broken things can echo,” she sang,

and I believed her, for once.

Now when it plays,

I don’t cry.

I open my wrists—not with blades—

but with bracelets of fire,

the kind only a woman forged in rage and ruin can wear.

I sing back.

I sing back, with rusted manacles now melted into melody.

And somewhere,

the gods of HeeraMandi nod from their carved balconies,

their silks stained with blood and rosewater,

knowing I’ve earned my own music.

- Oizys.

Another Note: Things have been difficult recently. I started the challenge with a lot of hope; actually kickstarted early. But once April began, I fell behind a bit. Still, I kept writing bits and pieces for the prompts, thinking I’d post them here and there, eventually. And I did. I found time, caught up, and kept going. And… I got featured. For the first time. Woah. Towards the end, though, things got heavier. More chaos. More anger. More sickness. More weddings (bad…?). More exploitation. More hurt. More loneliness. More humiliation. Just more difficult days. But I stayed. I posted. Even though, near the end, I kept feeling like giving up. Even the second last day, I posted that one quite late. And today’s April 30th prompt too. I didn’t want to give up so easily.

But part of me kept putting it off. Stubborn. Delaying and delaying, maybe because another part didn’t want this to end. That’s always been me: delaying or ignoring endings because I’m scared to confront them. I procrastinate until regret starts swelling in my bones. But this time, I tried. I tried to fight through the pain, through the restraining thoughts and I posted.

Had to write it on mobile. Haha. Not my usual style. Mostly, I do it with my laptop, some randomly old notebooks, a book or two and a pen.

But to win a battle, you do what you have to. I think I’ll always come back to this. That fight—the internal one—was the root of this poem. This month, I stuck to every theme, every prompt, went beyond and above just to hold on to it. But this final one: I took it purely as inspiration. I poured my conflict into it. Let the rage shape it. Let my sorrow speak. And I wrote it. I’ll always come back to this. A flag point. A fire I lit. And proof that even when I thought I couldn't (perfectly)—I did (even if not perfectly).

P.S.: Yeah, I know—it’s all very dramatic and sappy for just a yearly NaPoWriMo post. But hey, when you live inside your head 24/7, even poetry becomes a war diary. Let me have this one.

NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 13th): We are the eggshells he loves walking all over

From NaPoWriMo 2025 (Day Thirtheen): Happy Sunday, all – I hope you have an enjoyable thirteenth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Chronicles of Miss Miseria, where the response to Day Twelve’s symphonic, Stevens-inspired prompt fires on all cylinders.

Our daily resource is the online collection of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, founded in 1947 by Brazilian businessman Assis Chateaubriand. Here, you’ll find everything from old masters to mysterious photographs.

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; he fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.

Happy writing!

-

A note before I start: WOW. I got featured! I had so much fun writing it yesterday, and when I saw today's post, I realized I had been featured. I feel like I’ve achieved Nirvana, haha! This is actually a life-defining moment for me. I never even imagined getting featured, and yet here I am, receiving such beautiful comments from other participants. This keeps me going—not just in writing, but in life as well. Thank you, everyone!

Last night was particularly tough. After wrapping up a very exhausting work week, I sat down to write a diary entry for the blog but couldn't finish it. Then, this morning, a pleasant surprise awaited me, which made things a bit better. So, I decided to take the bits and pieces of the entry I had written last night and turn them into poetry by fitting them into Justice’s self-invented form. Does it have a name? Is it called the Loop? Or the Tandem?

Anyway, I was a bit jittery today, mood-wise, so I used this syllable counter because I kept losing track. It took me the entire day to shape that entry into a poem. Now, as midnight approaches, and with it, the burden of a new work week, I’m just posting whatever I could conjure up.

-

We are the eggshells he loves walking all over

We are the eggshells he loves walking all over,
Not with fear, but thrill, like it's all part of the game.
He steps in silence but leaves thunder in the hall,
He does it softly—still, it’s all part of the game.
We try to warn each other when he’s shifting moods,
Again, we brace, pretend it’s wind that rattles moods.

I learnt to read the air before I learnt to read.
His belt hung quiet, and the silence said obey.
I bit my tongue so hard I almost named it, mine.
The air grew thicker, and the silence said obey.
I watched Mom fold, then fold again, then look away—
When he begins to speak, where I go is away.

Mother folds her rage into napkins, perfectly,
While he notes on dinner like we’re hosting a play.
We learn to smile through clenched forks and paper roses,
We keep the table set, like we’re hosting a play.
We nod, and no one mentions how we never breathe,
You might crack beneath his gaze, if too deep you breathe.

He speaks and we all break in the silence we’ve kept,
Not a voice by us, just a specter of his name.
The house trembles as if it too cannot forget,
Not a word for us, but a shadow of his name.
The weight of this love presses down, and we try to hold,
Except we fold, while waiting for the weight to hold.

- Oizys.

Another note after we are done: From today's resource, I got to know about this artist, Maria Auxiliadora da Silva, and I found this painting of hers called Três mulheres (Three Women) and I was immediately interested by its raw intimacy. there’s something deeply emphatic about the way she portrays the women, almost as if their stories are being told in silence, through texture and color. It felt uncannily aligned with the emotion with which I was writing today. These three women, in the painting, rooted, expressive, enduring. It kept me reminded of the mother and daughters in my poem. There’s pain there, yes, but also a strange kind of dignity, a defiance that doesn’t shout but holds. I’ve been feeling scattered and cracked lately, like I’m trying to carry too much in too many directions. But looking at her painting kept me going while I wrote today's poem, and then rereading what I’d written, I felt seen. Maybe even held.

It’s strange how art finds you exactly when you need it. That's why, I love this year's NaPoWriMo theme. Her painting and Justice’s form, gave me tone and structure: together they formed a sound medium to hold the fragments. Not fixing everything, but making something from the brokenness. Just a poem, or a breath, or a painting of three women, holding their ground.

A dream, a Hindi poem, some roadblocks, negative bank balance & a heart full of melancholic rebellion

April 9th - 10th, 2025.

This afternoon, as the soft rays of sunlight filtered through my makeshift curtains (made from my mother’s old clothes) I couldn’t help but write down the strange and vivid dream I had last night. It felt so real like I had walked through an ancient city full of lively history. I had run away from home, travelling aimlessly. With just one bag and my laptop. The streets were yellow, and the air was thick with the scent of old wood and spices. I wandered through narrow alleys, searching for a shop to buy some food, feeling completely lost. I found a shop and I saw a man buying some sweet food, I asked if he could relay my message to the shopkeeper to give me some vanilla ice cream and the shopkeeper was a bit disappointed. And then, suddenly, I bumped into someone familiar.

It was A—my school friend, the one I hadn’t seen in years. She looked just like I remembered: laughing, carefree, strikingly plum and beautiful, a bright spark of joy amid that ancient, bustling city. I ran to her, telling her how I ended up there with no plan, no itinerary. She offered to help me, consoling me in a way I didn’t expect. It felt so different from how we were when we were kids. Back then, she was always the centre of our friendship, and I was the one who loved being her rock. There was also someone else in the dream, someone who felt like a very close friend but I can’t quite remember who they were. It’s like they slipped through my fingers, like sand running through my hands. Now, just a stick figure in my blurry dream. Still, I can feel the warmth of that dream, like a gentle whisper of night that stays with you even after you wake up.

Before I could process it all, I found myself in the newly renovated, cramped kitchen with my mother, making tea. We started talking about my recent work on child marriage and the challenges that come with it. As I shared my thoughts, she looked at me with that quiet understanding in her eyes, both wisdom and concern. Then she told me a story I hadn’t heard before, one that stuck with me. It was about a girl from a village I know, a teenager who had just been married off by her parents and was already pregnant. My mother described her voice as so young, barely having begun her life, yet already carrying this heavy burden. I could see the worry in my mother’s eyes, the weight of knowing how many young girls are still trapped in these cycles of early marriage.

That conversation stayed with me as I worked today. It gave me a weirdly renewed sense of urgency to keep going. But then, just as I was about to look up some cases for my research work, I found out that my access to the research databases I’ve been relying on was suddenly cut off. The user doesn't exist, it said. No warning, no explanation! It felt like such a big setback, a roadblock in the middle of everything I’ve been building like a bunch of coins wrapped in socks hitting you right across your face. It’s frustrating, and I don’t know exactly what to do next, but I’ll have to figure it out. I’ve sent some emails and am hoping for replies. Still, it’s disheartening. Amidst all of this, working in a social work sector and relying on funders' timeline of giving our organization, I have to decide when to pay my utility bills which is not exactly in my hands though.

So, I sat down to proofread and publish something with this entry I’d been meaning to finish: a poem that had been brewing in my mind for weeks. I finally wrote it all down last night, top to bottom. I’m not sure why, but writing it last night felt like a release, a way to process everything I’ve been feeling lately. Maybe it’s the dream, the conversation with my mother, or the frustration with the database issue. But when I read the words today, they felt like my emotional safety net today:

Main, Beti — Ek Virasat Ki Saza

(Ek Roohani Safar Ek Aurat Ki Awaaz Mein)

(Zakhm ko chamak nahi chahiye, sirf samajh chahiye)

Baap ke tamachon ne,

Rishtedaar ke tamashon ne,

Maa ki tamanna ne,

Meri tanhaayi ko maroda hai.

Raato ki khamoshi ne,

Andar ke toofanon ko chhoda hai,

Har hansne wali tasveer ke peeche

Ek roya hua chehra chhupa hua hai.

Doston ki chhupi hui hansi ne

Mere jazbaat ka mazaak uda diya,

Aur dil ke har tukde ne

Kisi yaad ka kafan odh liya.

Ab to khud se bhi dar lagta hai,

Aaina bhi aankhon mein jhaankta nahi,

Zindagi ne itna giraaya hai

Ke maut bhi mujhse sharmata nahi.

Baap ke gusse ka dar,

Maa ke aansuon ka dukh,

Chaar logon ki baaton ne

Ginwa diye hain aakhri din...

Sapne jo kabhi aankhon mein palte the,

Aaj woh sirf aankhon ke kone mein jalte hain.

Jin rishtey ko rab ka roop kaha tha,

Wahi ab seene mein shool sa chubhte hain.

Har narmi ek toheen ban gayi,

Har khushi ek saza lagti hai.

Zindagi ke is sheher mein,

Tanhai meri sabse wafadar saathi hai.

Na koi poochhne wala,

Na koi sunne wala hai yahan.

Bas ek khud se sawaal hai:

“Main ab bhi zinda hoon... kyun?”

Baap ka bhaari ghamand,

Maa ki halki si hansi,

Behen ki yaad,

Parchhaayi ko satati hai.

Khaali kamre ki deewar par

Uske gel pen se likhe naam ab bhi hain,

Aur uski chhoti-chhoti baatein

Raat ke sannate mein cheekh ban jaati hain.

Ek pal ko lagta hai sab kuch theek ho jaayega,

Magar doosre hi pal,

Zehar sa lagta hai har tasalli ka lafz:

“Sab theek ho jaayega…”

Dil to ab bhi dhadakta hai,

Magar kisi intezaar mein nahi,

Bas aadat hai...

Saans lene ki, jeene ki,

Kuch mehsoos kiye bina.

Intezaar hai us din ka,

Jab jalega baap ka ahankar,

Aur amar hogi maa ki azadi.

Us umeed ne rakha hai mujhe

Is kaali raat mein garam.

Jab behen ke sapno ko pankh milenge,

Aur nafrat ke dariya sookh jaayenge.

Jab sirf naam ka nahi,

Asliyat ka pyaar har chhat ke neeche rahega.

Main nahi chahti badla,

Bas khula aasmaan chahti hoon,

Jahan saans lene par

Kisi ke gusse ka bojh na ho.

Woh subah aayegi,

Jab maa muskaraayegi,

Aur main, ek baar phir,

Khud ko gale laga paungi...

Baap ka chillana,

Maa ka rona,

Waqt ka guzarna,

Rishtedaron ki tipanni,

Behan ke safarnaame,

Dosti ki yaadein,

Pyaar ka: na koi naam-o-nishaan.

Har kona, har chehra,

Ek chhoti si kahani ke tukde hain,

Jise main roz jodti hoon,

Aur raat tak phir se bikhar jaati hoon.

Na kabhi kisi ne poocha

Ke chhup rehna bhi cheekh sakta hai,

Na hi samjha

Ke muskurana, kabhi-kabhi, maut jaisa lagta hai.

Ab to khushi bhi ajeeb lagti hai,

Jaise kisi aur ki zindagi chura rahi hoon,

Aur dard...

Woh to meri apni milkiyat hai,

Jaise virasat mein mila ho koi zakhm ka makaan.

Bachpan ke sapne,

Jawani ki maaya,

Budaape ka dar,

Karm ka na koi phal,

Aur na hi badan ka khayal.

Zindagi ke har mod par

Bas ek sawaal rehta hai:

"Main yeh sab kyun jhel rahi hoon?"

Aur har baar jawab mein

Ek khaali khamoshi milti hai.

Peechhe mudh ke dekho to

Bas adhoore iraade,

Aage dekho to

Bas dhundhla sa andhera.

Jo tha, woh chala gaya,

Jo hai, woh jhooth lagta hai,

Aur jo aayega...

Usse milne ka hausla hi nahi bacha.

Par ab bhi...

Kahin dil ke kisi kone mein

Ek chingari si bachi hai

Shayad kisi savere ki,

Shayad ek khud ke gale lag jaane ki...

Is zindagi ke chakravyuh mein,

Jitni koshish kar loon bhaagne ki,

Wahi khalwat mein,

Usi bistar par,

Ek hi kamre mein band,

Mere sapne sadhte hain,

Aur uski buu se rooh

Roz thoda aur murjha jaati hai.

Deewaron ne sun liya hai

Jo duniya sun nahi paayi,

Aur takiye ne pi liya hai

Woh har aansu

Jo aankhon se bhi chhupa tha.

Hawa tak sawal karti hai ab:

"Ab bhi zinda ho?"

Aur main bas ek muskaan pehne

Keh deti hoon, "haan... kuch had tak."

Na roshni se dosti hai,

Na andheron se dushmani,

Bas aadat si ho gayi hai

Har raat ke khaali paanon mein

Apne hone ko talashne ki.

Chahe jitni bhi koshish kar lu main lekin,

Baap ka gussa: apne khoon se,

Maa ka doodh: apni niyat se,

Kabhi alag nahi hota.

Chahe jitni takkar laga lu main lekin,

Baap ka magn,

Maa ki chuppi,

Ke mishrit pehchaan ke daldal mein

Joojhne ka taqkar koi nahi hara sakta.

Main nafaqat insaan hoon,

Main ek silsila hoon,

Us virasat ka, jo kabhi chaha hi nahi gaya.

Har baras,

Mujhe jise dho kar naya banna tha,

Wahi baras mujhe aur gehra doobta gaya.

Aaj bhi apne aap se ladti hoon,

Kya sach mein main “main” hoon?

Ya sirf unke jhoothe khwab

Aur adhoore iraadon ka

Ek zinda saboot?

Kyonki na baap ki dambhi,

Na maa ke insaaf,

Beti ko kabhi bacha paaya hai

Is samaj ke chaar logon ki katcheri se.

Jahan na aawaaz ka mol hai,

Na khamoshi ki izzat,

Jahan beti ka sapna

Sirf parchaiyon mein likha jaata hai,

Aur uske iraade

Sharm ke naam pe jala diye jaate hain.

Usne khud se poocha hai aksar:

“Kya galti thi meri?

Kya paida hone ka faisla mera tha?”

Magar jawab har baar

Ek aur dard ban kar laut aata hai.

Kapdon ki lambai,

Chaal ki sidhaai,

Zubaan ki theek line,

Yeh sab likh diye gaye hain

Uske hone ke niyam ke taur pe,

Jabki uski har saans

Kisi azaadi ke geet ki talaash mein hai.

Woh roti hai toh kehte hain:

“Naazuk hai”,

Woh ladti hai toh bolte hain:

“Badtameez hai”,

Aur agar chup reh jaaye

Toh samaj ke kaanon mein

Zyada sukoon bajta hai.

Beti hone ka bojh

Kandhon pe nahi,

Rooh mein utar jaata hai.

Aur har baar jab koi

Uske hone pe sawal uthata hai,

Woh sirf zinda nahi rehti,

Woh pal-pal mar jaati hai.

Aur jab yehi beti ban jaati hai

Ek aurat,

Wahi baap ban jaata hai

Ek mard,

Aur maa kho jaati hai

Julmi samaj ke itihaas mein.

Beti ki galti

Uske sanmaan ke saath baandh di jaati hai,

Woh sanmaan

Jo uss mard ka katputli hota hai,

Wahi mard

Jo kabhi beti ko gale lagane par

Hichkichata nahi tha,

Magar duniya ke dar se

Uski zindagi ko hi jhukane laga.

Aur jab beti apni zubaan kholti hai,

Toh use "tez" kaha jaata hai,

Jab woh khud ke liye khadi hoti hai,

Toh use "besharam" samjha jaata hai.

Uski har saans

Ek faisla ban jaati hai

Jis par poori duniya

Judge ki kursi par baith jaati hai.

Aur tab samajhta hai koi bhi nahi,

Ke jis aurat ko woh chhoti soch mein tol rahe hain,

Woh pehle ek beti thi

Jo sirf pyaar chaahti thi,

Na ki sirf bardasht karne ki taleem.

Aur tab,

Us aurat ka sab kuch,

Uski bolti zubaan,

Uski chalti soch,

Uski jeeti-jagti rooh

Ek saza ban jaati hai.

{Yeh meri kahani nahi,

Yeh har us beti ki kahani hai

Jisne apni pehchaan virasat mein pai thi,

Aur apna wajood...

Khud banana pada.

Main, beti banke paida hui thi,

Aurat bankar likhi gayi hoon.

Magar kahaani ab bhi adhoori hai...

Kyunki kal ek aur beti paida hogi.}

[It is in Hindi language, someday I will translate to English, someday I promise.]

It’s strange how writing can be such a release. I’ve been carrying so many feelings lately, so many that sometimes it feels like there’s no room left to breathe. But when I wrote that poem last night, it was like I let out everything I’ve been holding inside. The words came almost on their own like they were waiting to be said. I still don’t entirely understand it, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe some things are meant to be felt and then shared, without always needing to be explained. Yesterday afternoon, while doing some research on child marriage, I sat down to read (again!) about the very inspiring Bhanwari Devi. Her story continues to haunt me and push me forward in my work. The strength she showed in her fight, despite the world turning its back on her, reminds me of the work I’m doing and the women I’m working for. Some of her words which I could also feel in the recent words of Gisèle Pelicot: 

‘it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them’

The poem, "Main, Beti — Ek Virasat Ki Saza," is my way of giving voice to a story I know all too well. And I know, if you are a girl or a woman reading, you know it too well too. I know you can feel it in your bones, in your blood, as do I. It’s about a girl, a woman, whose fate has already been written for her long before she gets a chance to choose. It’s about the generational curse of silence, suffering, and enduring an inheritance that no one would wish for. Yet, at the same time, it's a journey of resilience, of reclaiming one’s voice and challenging that very fate.

As I reread the my poem, I was also haunted by the thoughts of the young girl my mother spoke of. I think of her as I write this, and I know that even though my voice is just one of many, it has to keep speaking. It has to keep pushing for change, no matter how many obstacles or roadblocks appear. Even if no one or even one person is reading this, I have to keep writing. So, tomorrow when someone is somewhere in this spiderweb seeking some reassurance, some affirmation, some understanding, my words will be providing them.

And so, I’ll keep writing, keep fighting, keep speaking. Even when I feel lost, like I did in that ancient city in my dream, I know that the work I’m doing matters. Even though bills are pending, even though money is yet to come through, even though my shopping list is rotting in the waiting cart, even though I am unable to move out, go away from this familial swamp, even though I have zero support system, almost no safety net right now. Because, despite all of that, in some strange way, I feel like I’m not alone in it. Maybe A was in my dream for a reason. Maybe she represents the support, the comfort, and the unexpected help that comes when you least expect it. And, if I can be that to someone, anyone, then my work has achieved Nirvana! And the other figure, the one I can’t quite remember, maybe that’s a part of me that hasn’t fully come to the surface yet. Who is still figuring it all out? Either way, I’ll keep walking forward, guided by the voices of the girls and women I’m working for, and the dream that still lingers in my heart.

It’s a strange thing, how life sometimes feels like a combination of the personal, the political, and the emotional all intertwining. In my dream, I wandered lost until I found someone who reminded me of who I used to be. In my waking life, I see the same theme: finding pieces of myself in the faces of others, like the girl my mother spoke of, like the women I work with, like A, and even the figure I can’t fully place from my dream. It’s as if all of it is one long, winding journey where I’m constantly discovering and rediscovering what I care about, who I am, and how far I’m willing to go to make sure their voices are heard. Today was a reminder that even when things feel chaotic or uncertain or chronically bad, there’s a thread that runs through it all, one that I must keep following. Even when I can’t see the whole path, I trust that, like in my dream, I’ll find my way forward.

- Oizys.