Sparks Like Stars

You see, Sitara. If you don’t have the heart of a lion, do not travel the path of love.

In that moment, I realize why I’ve lived my adult life feeling like my insides are made of sandpaper. I’m just as culpable as Shair in robbing myself of my family. I have not allowed them to be part of me, failing to understand that their light can be my dawn—that a good day begins with a good mourning.

You know, we’re so damned afraid that talking about the ones we’ve lost will hurt us as much as losing them did. So we just stop talking about them. But that’s when we truly lose them.”

“Forgive me,” I say, with my hand raised to the blanket of stars above, ashamed of how long it has taken me to return to the place I came from, to ascend into the elsewhere I’m intended to be.

The dead are dead. The dying will soon be dead. Only the living can stand and be counted.”

If a tree falls in the forest, but no one posts about it on Facebook, is the tree even real?

f a tree falls in the forest, but no one posts about it on Facebook, is the tree even real?

That’s grief, and grief is nothing but the far brink of love. Love is the sun, grief is the shadow it casts. Love is an opera, grief is its echo. You cannot have one without the other. But if you follow that grief, you’ll find your way back to love. You haven’t let yourself do that yet, and you need to—in your own way. So cry, scream, run, sleep, pray, or write love notes in the sand. But grieve, so you can get back to love, because love is a better place to be.

I think of my mother and know that I could never be as present or as patient or as gentle as her. No child deserves any less.

Finding the right words is like plucking wildflowers from a tangled brush