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the bear

i keep wondering if that’s why you left. in the dark, in the hours that stretch long and thin between midnight and morning, i lie awake and turn it over like a smooth stone. there are nights when i tell myself the answer is near, just beneath the surface of memory, waiting to be named. i imagine the moment it all split, the before and after of it, the soft rupture that never quite healed. i imagine your footsteps leaving, soft as breath, final as thunder. i tell myself it wasn’t about me. you left to save yourself. i believe that, or i try to. i say it again and again, until the syllables lose shape. but what lingers is something quieter, something heavier, like you handed me a bag of stones and asked me to carry them for you, and i’ve been doing it ever since. there are people we no longer speak of, and that silence says more than any story ever could. i’ve stopped trying to understand them. maybe denial was a shield. maybe it helped them sleep. there are gestures i remember, phrases ...
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birdsong

when i was a child, i heard a story about a time before words. a time when people spoke in birdsong. trills, warbles, winding coos; sounds that curved like wind through reeds. soft, fluid, without the harsh break of consonants or the jarring clang of hard vowels. nothing that could be misheard. no syntax to fail you. just music. just motion. a language that ran through all things. a language you felt in the bones. now, the world overflows with language. french. spanish. farsi. german. english. hindi. arabic. countless tongues, countless systems — each promising understanding, each offering the illusion of closeness. and yet, i have never felt more voiceless. language is supposed to bind us together. it should be a bridge, a rope between islands. instead, it’s often a door slammed too fast, a lock we never learned how to pick. i say one thing. you hear another. meanings unravel between us like thread pulled loose from a sleeve. we mispronounce what matters. we hesitate at the wrong tim...
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21!

the moment i realize i am being seen is a jarring one. it happens all at once, or maybe it's happening slowly over time, and i just don’t notice until it is too late. until someone says you’re twenty-one in a way that makes me understand they are not. until someone says you’re a woman in a way that makes me understand that i am, in fact, not just a person, not just a being moving through the world, but something particular, something pre-defined. i do not think of myself as a woman, not in the way they think of me as one. i do not think of myself as young, not in the way they remind me i am. i think of myself as myself, which is to say, not as a body, not as a collection of traits, but as a mind, an observer. when i walk into a room, i do not think about how i appear in it. when i speak, i do not hear the voice of a twenty-one-year-old woman; i hear myself. but then someone makes a remark, says something offhand, and i feel it like a shift in the ground beneath me. i had not been ...
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past the point of needing

in the late afternoon light — heavy, gold, indifferent — i make my way home in a silence that no longer feels vacant. once, it did. once, it scratched at the walls, an absence so loud it felt like a scream. now it’s something else. now it fits. i wear it like a second skin. i used to want connection. or thought i did. i wanted laughter. voices. the sound of people existing near me, around me. i went looking for it in the usual places. crowded rooms, overfull conversations. i mistook presence for intimacy. i mistook noise for closeness. i watched. i waited. it never came. but time dulls even the sharpest longing. eventually, you stop reaching. eventually, the reaching itself is the thing that hurts. and when you let it go, when you stop hoping, what remains is quieter. easier. not better, exactly. just more honest. i thought i needed people. for a while, i did. the way you need heat when your bones go cold. but something changed. the warmth, when it came, felt like too much. the touch, ...
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send in the clowns!

there is a certain kind of person who performs. not for themselves, not even for the person across from them, but for the room. the idea of it. the possibility that someone, somewhere, is watching. they are not people in the traditional sense. they are reactions. reflections. a composite of glances and passing affirmations. they measure their value by how often heads turn, how quickly the professor pauses, how long the silence lasts after their voice has filled it. they sit at the front. always. the jokes come too loud. the laughter comes too fast. it’s not amusement. it’s a signal. look at me. hear me. i am clever. i am interesting. i am here. one of them answers a question. the wrong answer. but with the confidence of someone who has never had to question whether or not they should be speaking. the professor hesitates. corrects gently. not quite, she says. and for a second, no one moves. it is the most honest moment of the hour. then someone coughs. someone laughs. the show resumes....
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i hate my birthday

it is loathsome, to be observed. to be watched, weighed, regarded not as a person but as a point of interest. even in its mildest form — a glance, a question, a piece of small talk — there is pressure. the pressure to reply, to return, to offer something. and worse still: the spotlight. the deliberate moment of being looked at, fixed in place. not because you asked to be, but because it’s been decided for you. because it is time. i have always found it unbearable. and worse than the watching is the ritual that follows. the birthday. the promotion. the graduation. a cake appears. someone makes a speech. people laugh too loudly at nothing. you are meant to stand there. to nod. to be pleased. the affection arrives, prepackaged, awkward. it is a gesture, not a feeling. and what, exactly, are we meant to feel? the ritual seems designed to prove something. i exist, therefore i must be acknowledged. i have achieved this, therefore i must be clapped for. it all feels circular. i detest it. oth...
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oh no! i think i'm craving permanence: a conversation about kaveh akbar's "martyr!"

when we speak of martyrs, my mind drifts first to the selfless — the grand gestures, the sacrifices made in full view of the world. they burn, they bleed, and their suffering becomes a currency for something greater. but what is the essence of a martyr? is it the act of sacrifice itself, or the enduring myth that follows? and more quietly, more personally: does one become a martyr through the act of giving, or by the story that remains in their absence? the narrative left behind shapes the perception of the martyr, transforming their choices into symbols larger than the individual. these stories often serve as tools for those who survive, casting the martyr’s life into forms that fulfill societal needs or personal grief. is this reshaping a gift or a theft? does the martyr’s legacy belong to them, or to those who remember them? kaveh akbar in his book martyr!  writes of the martyr as a figure simultaneously luminous and haunting, their existence both exalted and tragic. to be a mar...
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