S.W.A.G- something we Arabs got

9,564 notes

You never realize the holes a person leaves behind until you fall into them.

9,039 notes

It’s scary how people leave scars on you; how certain people will never really vanish from the thoughts in your mind. I mean, I don’t think I will ever get over you. It’s not that I’m sad about us; but, sometimes in the middle of the day, out of nowhere, I hear your sentence quoted. I hear one of your phrases, loud in my mind, and I feel the way it goes all the way down to my heart again, destroying me like a tsunami. It overcomes you slowly. It’s like I get thrown back into the sea, and waves of my thoughts are crashing over me. I don’t know how I am supposed to get over a person, and you don’t have to. You can still cry after months about it. Even when you’re married and endlessly happy with that person, you should be able to cry about your first love. Not because you’re still in love with them, even if a little part still is, but because you will always love what you once loved. You learn to understand it. With every new moment and experience in your life, you start to understand, piece by piece, what was happening back then.

11,550 notes

Before you fuck up and call her anything less than her name, before you grab her by the arm you need to know the trigger that you are pulling at. You need to know that the safety is never on. You need to know her history before you tell me that this isn’t my business. You need to know that her history is my history.

See, she and I, we come from the tribe of raw knuckled little girls who call our father by their first names and wear their mothers like bruise coloured war paint under eye. We grew thick skin before we grew permanent teeth. We learned to piece together our own families in the backyards of rented duplexes where we promised plastic faced babies better things in soothing tones that we mimicked from TV. We do not have daddy issues even though our daddy’s have issues. We have piercing eyes and promises to keep. We grew up to be nomads surveying domestic war zones with black eyeliner binoculars, always refusing to camouflage. We threw our heads back and laughed at oncoming explosions, never flinched, absorbing shrapnel, never let them see us cry.

We do not dream of boys who will save us from towers. We dream of boys with courage caked under their fingernails. Boys with hands rough enough to wipe metal tears from our faces but warm enough to mold them into stars. Boys with vertebrae strong enough to lock with ours so they can sleep sitting back to back with us and keep watch. And these are the boys, these are the boys who will find love under our armor. These are the boys who will find that we love selectively but we love fiercely. These are the boys who will learn that we love in ways that leave claw marks down the baseboard before we ever let go.

So do not think she doesn’t know how you fear her absence - you should. Your cage is not stronger than her will or her smile. Do not think you are good enough to tame her. You aren’t. And do not think you are the first to try because i have already closed your eyes and crossed your arms before your body hit the floor. And you think she deserves better than you. You are right. So be better than you.

Be thankful that she knows your name and be careful never to forget hers.