Smokeinsilence / Sightofsea / Young Love By Bts / Nizar Qabbani / Abeba Birhane / The Waves By Virginia

Journal entries

25th June,

Pardon the hand that once wrote with astonishing impudence that sunsets were better than sunrises. I had woken early this morning with the sole purpose of watching the sun rise and stumbled drowsily up to the terrace, expecting a glaring orb of sunflower tints, but was pleasantly surprised when a golden and blue frenzy of cloud met my gaze. I caught my breath and spun around, inhaling all the delightful freshness of the dawn. The sky was entirely covered in a single expanse of white cloud, breaking away here and there to reveal some soft lavender or violent cobalt. I strolled over to a ledge and seated myself upon it, my foot dangling a few foot above the ground, preparing to lose myself in a reverie. The place where the mountains usually were was shrouded in a fog so thick that the only things visible were the glistening peaks of the far off valley. I found myself thinking of the sea, for the entire thing seemed to be an elaborate imitation of the ocean. In the indented wave of the soft white cloud, in the unpredictable changes of tint, in the light twinkling upon the slim corners of a half broken drift, in the glints of the half risen sun from behind a pale golden shroud, every where I turned, there it was. And the sun ascended leisurely, flooding the mist covered valley with a light that transformed the whole range into a dreamy golden harbour. I have fallen in love with gold, not the crude yellow of the metal, but this intoxicating hue which has now adorned the sky with its gorgeous shades. And so the prodigal son has returned, I whispered under my breath, as my eyes traced the path of a swallow across the scene. I looked at the sun until tears started to my eyes and I could no longer bear the scorching intensity of her gaze, whereupon an old friend of the squirrel tribe wandered across to say good morning and all was forgotten and I now sit here, as a cool breeze blows, twirling a loose strand of hair and writing.

Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place // Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities // Warsan Shire, Conversations About Home // Fatimah Asghar, Partition // Aysha, Diaspora Defiance // Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous // Kaveh Akbar, Do You Speak Persian? // Safia Elhillo, Date Night With Abdelhalim Hafez // Gustavo Perez Firmat, Bilingual Blues // Scherezade Siobhan, How to Welcome the Dead

I’ve been unnaturally happy all day and I am not sure if this is a good thing *throws phone up in the air and laughs idiotically while silly songs play really loudly in the background*

Evening at the Balcony

I smoke the night from my neighbour's pipe

When the smell of baking bread and piano pieces

Are gone down with the sun, and the cloud creases

Over the sea of mountains where lights rest dove-like

I rise from a wasted pile of blankets and books for a hike

To the balcony. I stop at the corolla vines and stand by,

And wait with the jackdaws until the smoke billows up to the sky.

One night, sharing unseen my neighbour's cigarette

And their voices that lend themselves to a radio babble

I watched a single star warmed by the clouds and space rubble

It fluttered, almost clattered so bright

Its fire spilled and burned the balmy night.

One by one shreds of clouds caught spark and rushed away

And believe me when I say the moon hid under the trees today.

Tonight again, I waited at the moon for the shared smoke

And tonight I found a friend in the fig tree, it spoke

To me as I would have thought it might

But at its wild branches rustling the jackdaws took to flight

Yet alone I wasn't, for the purple tree and I

Could speak as old friends, warming up by and by

It knows now all the stale words and song

That fumes in my head all evening long.

In turn I have mapped out its lost heart.

- pollosky-in-blue

Nothing much, I know, just an old sunset.

I met an old centipede on the terrace today, slowly she crawled up to me. “Isn’t the sky beautiful today?” She remarks. I tilted my head forward and mumbled, “My aunt says she has seen finer ones, over Misty hilltops and pale dawns.”. She smiled, (I thought centipedes couldn’t smile?) “You’ll never find beauty or happiness in anything if you keep thinking there is something better.” Did she sound wistful? I don’t know. We sat there for a while, she crept near me and asked in a whisper, “Will you play something on that old guitar?” “Uh, sure.” I say and pick up my guitar and start strumming an old tune. I kept muting strings and tripping over notes. But as she showed no signs of noticing anything, I continued playing, until twilight gave way to the night sky and the music faded away in discord. “It was lovely”, she said. I raised an eyebrow. “It was lovely.” She repeated, as mosquitoes swarmed over my phone that had lit up at a notification from my math teacher.

October is my empire. Terror is part of me. 一 Tamura Ryūichi

1. Alfonsina Storni, 2. Cy Twombly, 3. William Stanley Merwin, 4. Cy Twombly, 5. Virginia Woolf, 6. Jorge Albericio, 7. Gala Mukomolova, 8. Andrei Tarkovsky, 9. Czesław Miłosz, 10. Andrei Tarkovsky, 11. Thomas Wolfe, 12. Andrei Tarkovsky, 13. Louise Glück

i'm a simple girl: i see sunlight on the water, i find god

have you ever had a friend, like as in a normal friendship? ever?