Nobody is here.

Nobody is here.
Nobody is touching me.
Nobody is beating me.
Nobody is hitting me.
Nobody is engulfing my space.
Nobody is screaming at me.
Nobody is manipulating me.
Nobody is scheming behind me.
Nobody is degrading me.
Nobody is humiliating me.
Nobody is hitting the back of my head.
Nobody is looking at me.
Nobody is pushing me.
Nobody is killing me.
Nobody is abusing me.

Nobody is judging me.

Nobody is laughing at me.

Nobody is commenting on me.

Nobody is excluding me.

Nobody is following me.

Nobody is waiting outside the door.

Nobody is standing in the hallway.

Nobody is listening through the wall.

Nobody is reading my messages.

Nobody is checking my phone.

Nobody is tracking my steps.

Nobody is counting my breaths.

Nobody is timing my silence.

Nobody is correcting my tone.

Nobody is policing my body.

Nobody is rewriting my words.

Nobody is twisting my memory.

Nobody is asking what I did to deserve it.

Nobody is telling me I imagined it.

Nobody is warning me to behave.

Nobody is threatening consequences.

Nobody is measuring my usefulness.

Nobody is deciding my worth.

Nobody is shrinking the room.

Nobody is locking the door.

Nobody is holding the key.

Nobody is watching me sleep.

Nobody is rehearsing an excuse.

Nobody is preparing a story.

Nobody is waiting for me to forget.

Nobody is coming.

This is what safety sounds like,
in my half-room.
while I hold myself
and repeat these lines.

STOP! STOP! STOP!

Reminding myself...
That what had happened.
is not happening right now.

And yet it is happening

inside the body.

As the intrusive rumination of the past

occupies my present,

and the intrusive rumination of the present

settles into my future.

No active threat detected.
No incident report filed.
No visible bruising.
No current occupation.

My body disagrees.

Nobody is here...
so why does my spine rehearse surrender?
Nobody is touching me...
so why does my skin still flinch at footsteps?
Nobody is screaming...
so who taught my sleep to duck?
Nobody is manipulating...
so why do I cross-examine my own memory?

Somewhere else,
the same sentence is spoken louder.

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others

   (do not forget the pigeon’s food).

As you conduct your wars, think of others

   (do not forget those who seek peace).

As you pay your water bill, think of others

   (those who are nursed by clouds).

As you return home, to your home, think of others

   (do not forget the people of the camps).

As you sleep and count the stars, think of others

   (those who have nowhere to sleep).

As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others

   (those who have lost the right to speak).

As you think of others far away, think of yourself

   (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

- ‘Think of Others,’ Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

Nobody is bombing.
Nobody is starving.
Nobody is suppressing.
Nobody is silencing women.
Nobody is legislating bodies.
Nobody is disappearing dissent.

Nobody is burning books.

Nobody is drawing borders.

Nobody is poisoning water.

Nobody is profiting from pain.

Nobody is chaining the gates.

Nobody is selling the future.

Nobody is watching through glass.

Nobody is marking the skin.

Nobody is forgetting the names.

Nobody is looking at the screen.

Nobody is feeling the routine.

Nobody is waking to the screams.

Nobody is shattering the dreams.

Nobody is claiming it was their fault.

Nobody is stopping the assault.

Nobody is holding the empty plate.

Nobody is checking at the gate.

Nobody is seeing the truth unfold.

Nobody is doing as they are told.

Nobody is taking all the blame.

Nobody is calling them by name.

Nobody is turning the page.

Nobody is closing the book.

Nobody is pulling the lever.

Nobody is writing the law.

Nobody is taking the toll.

Nobody is breaking the bread.

Nobody is lighting the fuse.

Nobody is stealing the light.

Nobody is selling the truth.

Nobody is closing the door.

Nobody is stopping the clock.

Nobody is waking the ghost.

Nobody is changing the lock.

Nobody is holding the key.

Nobody is setting it free.

Nobody is signing the orders.

Nobody is counting the bodies.

Nobody is answering for it.

Nobody is responsible.

It is called stability.

It is called order.

It is called protection.

It is always called something else.

Nobody was hurt.
Nobody meant it.
Nobody remembers it that way.

My nervous system does.
The rubble does.
History does.

If not nobody, then who?

Stop saying nobody.

Say:

They were here.

They did it.

They benefited from it.

They are still benefiting.
They are still doing it.
They are still here.

Different house.

Different flag.

Same architecture.

And there was never nobody.
And there was always someone here.
And someone was always signing the orders.
And the absence is someone's uniform.
And I am done pretending absence is peace.
And you knew.

~ Oizys.

—

After-poetry note: This poem-like paraphernalia is about somatic memory, trauma memory, and intergenerational residue that aggravates and furthers harm while preventing present safety; institutional and societal denial of harm; linguistic gaslighting; power and privilege hiding in passive voices; the violence of “stability”; the myth of absence; the interrogatory grammar of the abuser; the accomplice that is “no one”; and the escalation–de-escalation ricochet from personal trauma to collective violence, as well as the tension between private body and public violence. Our bodies, souls, minds, hearts, and nervous systems remember what official language forgets. Sometimes, zooming out from the half-room to the geopolitical scale, we write the “necessary.” So I had to. Even if I can't escape this half-room anytime soon, I don’t know when. I don’t know if I ever will. But the walls are not unnamed, because the silence has fingerprints, and the word “nobody” no longer protects them. I have spent my whole life, until now, learning that survival is not the same as agreement. And I am still here... breathing, witnessing, writing in a corner, reading, thinking, questioning, refusing the passive tense. Even if the door does not open, and a path is never paved, and the body trembles and shakes, and the mouth fumbles, and the feet stumble, and history echoes, wanting us to repeat, I am done rehearsing surrender. I am done bowing. I refuse to echo. And if I cannot leave the half-room, I will name it. And if I cannot dismantle the architecture, I will map it. And if I cannot stop the clock, I will mark the hour. Because even here, even now, someone is here. And that someone is me.

January 2026 So Farrr...

I don’t know how to write. I don’t know where to write, what to write about, or where to start. So I’ll start from that ignorance.

The year began with sickness. Fever, cold, cough, delirium, nausea, no appetite. A strange pain returned in the middle of my chest... the same one that had disappeared just before the new year, like it was waiting politely for January to arrive before making a comeback. Today I finally feel better. Not fully, there’s still the cough, and the chest pain keeps peeking out like it wants attention. And as if that wasn’t enough, a weird pain showed up in my left toe today. Truly impressive. The body has range.

Ugh. Anyway. Sickness brings with it a lot of enforced stillness, and with stillness comes daydreaming. Endless, foggy, indulgent daydreams. I’ve moved on from the previous phase into a new one: new scenarios, new futures, new versions of myself. But as the sickness fades, so does the fog. And as it lifts, guilt walks in like it owns the place.

Guilt about not doing enough. Politically. Morally. Historically. As if I owe the world a revolution and keep missing the deadline. The daydreams didn’t help. They escalated quickly into fantasies of changing everything, of reorganizing the world from the inside out. Very efficient. Very imaginary.

Some lines came out of those dreams. I stored them away carefully, telling myself I’d write them down when I had the energy. I’ve been chasing them softly since then, afraid they’ll vanish if I don’t catch them soon as I procrastinated writing until now. Thank goodness.

The premise was this: I had already left the country. Left my family behind. I returned, but hadn’t yet reached my hometown. And this is what came to me: 

Coming back to my country feels like going back home. The government interrogates me the way my father did. The house dominates the way the state does. Talking to officers-in-charge makes me feel seven years old again, my father’s screams replaying as prosecution. Everywhere I go in this country feels like those days when I ran freely inside a house I was trapped in, locked in, while my father was in another city, another state altogether. The worst part is this: I cannot wait to leave the country again, and I haven’t even gone back home yet.

The world, meanwhile, has not gotten better. If anything, it seems committed to getting worse with impressive consistency. Sickness keeps increasing; bodies keeps failing; systems keep rotting; oppressors keep oppressing. The erasure of Gaza has not stopped. The settler-colonial project marches on, knee-deep in blood and paperwork, methodically erasing Palestinians while their investors facilitate and fund it by calling it policy, security, inevitability. Iranian women took to the streets at the turn of the year; old year to new year, hope to hope; and now there is a brutal internet blackout. Silence is the best strategy of oppressors. People are being massacred while the world refreshes its feeds and finds nothing loading. My own country isn’t doing well either. The state feels unwell, like a body ignoring its symptoms. Water has suddenly become poisonous. Air quality remains debilitating, just like last year, lungs working overtime for the privilege of existing. Women are still being raped. Rapists are still out on bail. And the political prisoner I once mentioned on my blog? He did not get bail. Of course he didn’t. The system knows exactly who deserves mercy and who deserves demonstration. 

Some days it feels obscene to write about my chest pain or my toe when entire populations are being suffocated slowly, officially, legally. Other days it feels obscene not to write, as if silence is collaboration. I don’t know which day this is. January hasn’t clarified that yet.

I hope to all the prisoners trying to break open the cage, it flings open, not gently, not ceremonially, but violently enough to never be rebuilt the same way again. I hope to all the people on the streets with fire in their hands and sparkles of hope in their hearts, it lights open their country, not as spectacle, not as martyrdom, but as a slow, irreversible dawn. I hope to all the colonized fighting to dismantle the settlements, it collapses from the inside, their oppressive walls forgetting why they were built, apartheid borders losing their language, maps finally embarrassed by their own lies. I hope this year does not demand heroism from exhausted bodies. I hope it allows endurance to count. I hope staying alive remains a political act. For them, I have written this:

From oppressed hearts, sparks of hope arise,
igniting fires against the engines of domination.
They pierce the world’s long night,
calling forth justice, calling forth dawn.
Forged through struggle, they shape a more humane tomorrow,
voices joining as one, as an unbreakable chorus,
shattering the chains of tyranny,
proving that no darkness can silence
the human spirit’s relentless pursuit of liberty.

I hope to myself, quietly, without announcement. I hope I survive the guilt without surrendering the anger. I hope caring does not become a liability. I hope rest is not mistaken for defeat. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, break open my prison cage and thrust my body back into life and the world, clumsy and unprepared and alive anyway. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, take the fire in my heart and burn this house of fears instead, and run along the sweet streets of life with light and stardust in my palms, reckless with joy, irresponsible with hope. I hope I, too, one day, maybe this year, break this inheritance of silence, this generational choreography of shrinking, this traditional habit of apologizing for existing too loudly or wanting too much. I hope I stop confusing survival with waiting. I hope I stop mistaking endurance for arrival. I hope I learn that softness is not the opposite of strength as it is often the source. I don’t want to be exceptional. I don’t want to be heroic. I just want to be here, fully, loudly, without asking permission. Maybe that is the revolution my body can afford this year. Maybe that will have to be enough.

For now, this is all I can offer with hope, unfinished, unguaranteed, but still breathing.

- Oizys.