by Khadija Rupa
then he is keeping you forgetful,
preventing you from remembering,
you are a completely different soul.
In one world,
he would delightfully live
two lives together.
With one life,
he would have two bodies,
two souls, two hearts.
But you,
you won’t be dead,
either.
My Aim In Life
Everyday you have the choice to be whatever you want to be. If you dream of being a doctor, even before being this, you already become something: you become—its dreamer. You plan to be a destination, but even before being this, you become this—its path. You long to be someone’s love and instantly you become a seeker of—love.
When they ask you what you want to be, broaden your chest, straighten up your ten legs and tell them, “When I grow up, I want to be myself.” And that’s it—you become you.
For whatever else you wish to be, you could only become—someone else. Or no one at all.
Remember World Remember
When a fresh new leaf splits,
in a season it was meant
to live whole,
when a new branch breaks,
in a phase it was supposed to
bear sweet berries,
when a bud withers,
exactly when it was
to bloom into a vibrant flower,
when the strongest root detaches,
and it can no longer
nourish its undeveloped parts,
remember world, remember,
a tree like that isn’t dead;
it lives death by living its life.
Sometimes death isn’t what happens
when living comes to an end;
sometimes death is—living, too.
Last Day Of Eternity
In love, one can always believe in loving someone until the end; but I’ve learnt, love isn’t a belief. In love, one can always promise to always want someone no matter what happens; but I’ve learnt, love isn’t a promise. In love, one can always challenge loving someone every single day of forever; but I’ve learnt, love isn’t living the forever in a challenge, in words, or in confidence. In love, one can always sacrifice, one can always try, to cross the ocean, to touch the sky; but I’ve realised, love isn’t what you did. Neither why you did. Nor how you did. Love isn’t how much you used to, how much you still, or how much you will.
Love isn’t what could be, what would be, what should be.
Love is standing on the last day of eternity, and saying—I’ve loved you, held you, every single day of forever, and I still do.
A Strange Punishment
They kept telling her, reminding her, warning her—“What would people say?” Her dreams were thrown away, her prayers left unanswered; she was told the world is bad so she must remain scared. Slowly and painfully, one day, very joyfully, she became all that people won’t say—She became depressed, beautifully hopeless, and a little bit of death.
And these same people, always fearing what others would say, now call her—a burden.
The Ocean
It’s raining incredibly. My windows keep themselves wide open with the help of the wind’s strange resentment upon them. The night, sitting like a princess in the garden of stars high above, is throwing all its blackness soaked in chilly moonlight right through the windows—to me.
I swear I can clearly hear every raindrop. I can clearly hear every word that was quiet when I needed them to speak the most. I can clearly hear how every memory is still begging to finish the story of an unfinished ache. I can clearly, very clearly, hear all the parts of me, which learn no language, asking for my forgiveness for failing to brace my form and shape. At the same time, drops of pain wearing cloths made of water jump out of my eyes to sit on my lap like an innocent child.
But nothing of it kills me anymore. Nothing of it fills me with despair. Every raindrop that hits the ground so hard, breaking all of its legs, arms and all other bones, reveals to me a beautiful secret of strength, power, and transformation: that only because of falling so hard are they able to meet the stronger, the bigger part of themselves—the ocean. For the first time they witness, how this stronger and bigger part of them, this ocean, never becomes a dawn when the dawn comes and orders it to be so. It becomes the silver that shines, gold that glows. When the noon threatens, the ocean doesn’t become noon. It becomes green that glitters or orange that overwhelms, or even powerfully red…and two blue radiant eyes—when the blackness hits so hard at night.
And on an inspiring sunny day of summer, the raindrop becomes so full of inspiration and courage that like a balloon filled with gas, it rises up in the sky. Even after such a hard fall, it becomes as whole as before; as fearless as it has always been. Broken legs, arms, and all other bones—all fine and set to fall back again.
When you are hurt for the first time, you become scared to be hurt again. No one bears the first taste of hurt well, believe me. When you are hurt for the second time, you suffer terribly that it happened again. The third time you are hurt, you become severely terrified that your life will be a repetition of nothing but hurt. And the repetition actually continues until the day you fall in a way that breaks your legs, arms and all the other bones of your heart. That’s when you finally touch the ground. Now you are prepared to meet the ocean—the stronger, the bigger part of you—who takes the perfect form of courage and bravery and victory when different forms of ache try to scare you. Who doesn’t become the ache itself. And so the hurt becomes fun, especially when you discover you don’t have wings, nor are you flapping your arms, nor are you making any flying leaps…but still you are rising up. Broken legs, arms, bones—all fine and set to fall back again.
That’s why we call the fall—rain.
Always washing away the dirt. And pain.
When You Find Yourself In The Wrong Place
Sometimes a place,
a story,
a time,
a home,
a world,
doesn’t need the people
who fit in it.
Sometimes a place
a story,
a time,
a home,
a world,
needs the people
who don’t fit in it.
That’s how the rose
beautifies, embellishes, transforms
a whole monstrous tree,
where only thorns should be.
Definition Of Strength
I—I am a girl: the invisible soft part of a young lady and an old woman. I may burst into tears just by seeing a withered flower in my neighbour’s garden. And may continue to weep seeing a magnificent Oak tree in my backyard.
You—you don’t need to hurt or break me into pieces to make me cry. I cry even when you mend my burnt hands and heal my inner wounds. I cry when I am so wonderfully whole. I cry even when you make me smile. I cry, I cry even when I am totally safe with you.
You—you don’t need to give me a reason, too, to grieve. A silent word, a blank page, a beautiful empty cage, may easily make my eyes wet.
You—you don’t need to give me expensive things. Just give me a teddy-bear hug. Or place me under the wide sky where I won’t notice my own feet; I won’t see any walls, any roofs, any barriers…and I would easily shed tears.
But don’t say I cry because I am a girl, a woman and my heart is weak. Or a boy, a man, must be the reason. And never ever, tell me—never-ever—that my tears are spurious, that through them I try to trap you. Try to emotionally blackmail you. The destruction of this universe began the day it was decided to prevent boys and men from crying in order to redefine—strength. If you don’t believe me, go back in history. And even the future will be clear to you. This won’t remain a world
of strong bodies full of strength; this will soon become a world of extremely strong bodies, full of hardness that break exact bodies like theirs that will never get repaired.
Remember, our tears, our tears, our softness, don’t make us weak. It can never be the definition of—weakness. After all, the most unbreakable hearts have been given birth by those girls and women who cry. So you and your world must decide what your own definition of strength will be: someone who is hard because of not crying, or someone who is strong because of crying.
A Forgotten Hope
I know we can go beyond the road.
If not the real road,
then the road of humiliation, for sure.
I know we can swim against the current.
If not the real current,
then the current of
our wounded hearts, for sure.
I know we can rise up from the ocean
after touching our fingers to its floor.
If not the real ocean,
then the ocean of despair, for sure.
I always knew,
God can do beyond the things
we think He is able to do.
And so today I know,
we can always go beyond the line
we have thought we would end up on.
God gave us that power.
God gave us that control.
What I Used To Fear Most?
That someday I would love someone; and this person would love me back, just as much. We would spend our time together, doing things that our friends would find childish. And everyone would laugh if they ever discovered our secret ways of showing love. He would know the truth but still I would lie, only to see that twinkle in his eyes. All the time he would watch me, I would pretend not to notice. Our four in the mornings would always be for God alone. Something he would share, something I would share. Sometimes he would cry, sometimes I.
Then one day everything would change. I would no longer be in his home, in his life. I wouldn’t be in his photo albums, wallet or behind the colours of his office shirt. When my mug with his nickname would start to crack, he wouldn’t notice. Everything that was ours in that house would now become only his. He would wake up alone, but appear… thankful. His autumn would be only his. So, too, its colours. And his smile would be more beautiful as he would wait for someone else to take the place that once belonged to me. Then she would start to live my mornings, and stand holding the same hands in front of the same mirror. My nights would be hers. The moon and stars outside my window, all hers, too.
In my imagination, I used to fear all these things. My mouth and lips used to go completely dry. But now we have arrived exactly at this point. And I must admit things are very different when you are actually living your fear, taking God as your only strength. God shows you how your fear comes to break you, cut you, make you bleed, so that you become stronger. And you find no reason why you should stay broken.
It makes my day, it makes me smile, to think you are doing fine in that same world, same room, same bed where once I used to be. And our memories didn’t stop your time.
Nor did they stop mine.
Self Realisation
No one ruined me, actually. No one made me lonely, no one broke my heart. Every day is a different day for me not because the date is different, the month is different, the year is different; but because every day, I learn a new lesson.
So today I woke up, just like I always do. The summer sun, the dawn sky, the light breeze, the sound of the trees, everything was different. But the lesson I learnt—that was new. Today I learnt to look back and notice my own faults. Today I learnt that—that no one holds the power to ruin me, to make me lonely, to break my heart as long as I don’t allow them to do so. I learnt—to understand and claim that all those days even I was wrong somewhere—is a kind of bravery that even the fearless soldiers don’t show in a field of war.
Beauty Of Broken Hearts
I don’t know if I’m living in the same world as yours where the day ends sharp at 12:00 p.m. and sharp at 12:01 a.m., everything restarts. Without a single stoppage, a single delay, a single pause. The murderers of hearts walk freely on the road as if nothing happened yesterday. The one who threw all my pages into the deep sea just an hour ago—sleeps so comfortably as if no injustice took place on this planet.
I can allow this brand new time to snatch the eyes away from me, the same eyes through which I have been creating an entirely different solar system. I can allow this time, that was nothing to me many years ago when I stood up on my two baby feet quicker than many, to make me shake. Today, leaving time behind, I can even disappear, easily—inside a huge plane to Palm Desert without a single complaint. I can allow time to be the road on which I run so fast that I am unable to count the cracks on the walls under my own skin.
But the twelve numbers of my clock, they shouldn’t heal all my wounds. They can swirl, they can whirl and I am ready to stand right in the centre of second, minute and hour without running away or collapsing—but these three hands, they will always be too weak to catch all my pain.
Because I’m stronger right where I have been wounded.
It’s Too Late
And I would change
in a beautifully dangerous way
that you would ache terribly to believe.
With an artist’s confidence
I would transform myself
into an historic artwork.
You would try to understand
the new me,
my unbelievable recovery.
But nothing would ever be understood,
nothing would seem real, except this—
“It was her, it was always her.”
The Healing
Suddenly in a dull afternoon,
the rolling waves stopped coming
back to the shore,
simply flowing away to the unknown.
Happiness closed up its door.
Autumn, summer, spring,
every season left
all the vivid colours.
Fascinating birds, too,
stopped fluttering their feathers,
silently sitting all day
on the innermost branch all alone.
At last that unwanted moment
reached its desired time;
when the night entered the space,
even the darkness turned away its face.
And eventually, sadness, too,
stopped loving the sad,
stopped loving my loneliness
and simply left.
Freedom
My silence,
now speaks to me
better than ever before.
Now when I know
I should be angry,
I am not.
Today I turn all my wounds
into my freedom,
with my arms wrapped around me,
eyes tightly closed.
Hope For The Heartbroken
In love we never
are the losers;
in it either we win
or we become wiser.
Either we make someone eternal,
Or we become—one.
The Secret To Success
Find yourself after getting lost;
you will get the address
of where you can
always be found.
Love after unreciprocated love,
you will never be wrong
about how
you must be loved.
Heal yourself after being wounded,
you will become skilled at
remaining unwounded
despite the wounds.
Retain hope after constantly failing,
and tell me if you haven’t
discovered for
you,
where your success is still waiting.
You are a House
There is a difference
between a home and a house.
A home is where you leave
a piece of your heart.
A piece of your soul.
A house, however, is
where you live.
Your words, your behaviour,
your character, your manner,
your belief, your dreams, your wishes—
all these together are
the big house where you live.
It all depends on you—only you—
how serene your home must be
and how beautiful you want
your house to be.
That, be it home or house,
people come in,
and never again want to leave.
True Success
What books failed to inspire,
Faith was never unsuccessful.
What swords and bombs failed to accomplish,
Faith was never unsuccessful.
What wealth and poverty failed to buy,
Faith was never unsuccessful.
What pain failed to transform,
Faith was never unsuccessful.
What the whole world failed to give,
Faith was never unsuccessful.
What love failed to heal,