I am not Palestinian.
But I watched the sky collapse through a screen—
a child’s name turned into ash
before the world ever learned to pronounce it.

I don’t speak for them.
I listen.
To lullabies drowned by sirens,
to the hush after impact,
to a silence that roars louder than any flag.

They don’t need my voice.
They need my volume.
So I turned comfort into confrontation,
ink into artillery,
and every poem into a siren that never shuts off.

I was mid-bite,
wrapped in safety,
when the news showed fathers holding dust
where their daughters used to sleep.
I choked on privilege.
Felt rage boil beneath my ribs.

You ask where I stand?
Not neutral—
because neutrality is just cowardice with a clean face.
I chose the ones who bury their children
and still find a way to pray.
I chose the ones
the world keeps trying to silence.

This is not charity.
It’s reckoning.
Because silence is comfort.
And comfort, when others die, is betrayal.

So from a distance,
I send fists full of reverence.
Love with its sleeves rolled.
Truth with no filter, no leash, no apology.

I won’t be the poet
who rhymed for praise
while Palestine screamed in the background.
I’ll be the one who built a stage from my spine,
so their stories could echo louder than mine ever could.

I am not Palestinian.
But I saw.
And now—
the world will too.

I wake up with pressure where peace should be.
Tight chest, cold hands—
like my body’s got bad news it won’t share with me.
I open my eyes, but the war’s already started.
No trigger, no trauma—just wired and guarded.

People say “you’re good, just breathe,”
like lungs are the problem.
Like air ever fixed the kind of drowning I do in silence.
I’m not sad.
I’m not mad.
I’m just… off.
And nobody sees it when the switch flips soft.

I laugh on cue.
I answer, “I’m fine.”
But inside, I’m pacing the edge of a line
I can’t name.
I can’t cross.
I can’t leave behind.

You ever feel scared for no reason at all?
Like your bones remember something you don’t recall?
Like you’re the only one in a room full of light
who’s being followed by shadows no one else fights?

It’s not drama.
It’s not weak.
It’s a weight you carry in your teeth—
locked jaw, clenched fists, fake calm.
A panic that wears your face and moves on.

Some nights I just stare at the ceiling,
trying to outrun a thought I’m not even feeling.
I pray for stillness but get static instead—
a quiet so loud it screams in my head.

This ain’t for pity. This ain’t for show.
This is survival. This is let go or blow.
This is for every heartbeat I had to fake.
Every smile I stitched for everyone’s sake.

So if I ever seem distant, short, or strange—
I’m not cold.
I’m in chains.
Fighting to breathe in a body that blames
me
for the storm I didn’t choose,
for a mind that tightens every fuse.

Anxiety don’t knock. It just breaks in.
Puts its feet up and asks how I’ve been.
So I tell it—
“You again?”
It smiles.
“Yeah. You know I live in your skin.”

We are taught to choose,
as if indecision is death—
as if silence is weakness,
and hesitation, sin.
But truth isn’t always loud.
And power
isn’t always movement.

There are moments
when the greatest strength
is doing nothing.
Not out of fear,
but out of wisdom.
Because not every door needs opening.
Not every question needs an answer.
Not every fire deserves your water.

Sometimes, the chaos wants your reaction.
It feeds on your urgency.
It tricks you into thinking
that action alone
equals progress.
But no—
discernment is the throne.
Restraint is the crown.

The strongest ones don’t always strike.
They observe.
They wait.
They listen to the wind
before choosing where to plant their flag.
They watch the pieces move
before touching the board.

There is courage in stillness.
There is defiance in the pause.
Because when you don’t have to decide,
you reclaim the power of timing.
You allow truth to mature,
emotion to settle,
and consequences to reveal themselves.

Some storms burn out
without a single match lifted.
Some lies unspool
without confrontation.
And some choices solve themselves
when you give them the mercy of silence.

You are not passive.
You are precise.
You are the calm in a world of reaction.
You are the breath
before the leap.
And the space
between rage and regret.

So if the moment does not demand a decision,
then don’t offer one.
Let life unfold
without your forced grip.
Let wisdom be the silence
between questions
you never needed to ask.

They counted coins.
You counted questions.
They chased profit like prey—
you chased truth like prophecy.
And though the world didn’t notice at first,
you knew:
fortune follows those who feed the mind
before the hand.

While others raced the clock
trying to beat the system,
you were building one.
One forged in quiet corners,
long nights,
books full of dust and diamonds.
You didn’t hunger for the gold.
You hungered for the why.

And with each answer,
you laid bricks beneath your future
while they played hopscotch on sand.
Because money is a moment.
But knowledge—
knowledge is momentum.
A force that compounds
in silence
until the noise can’t ignore it.

You didn’t flaunt degrees.
You wore humility
like armor.
You didn’t scream credentials.
You let your results do the whispering.
And soon enough,
the same world that dismissed your hunger
became ravenous for your insights.

Money came.
Quietly, respectfully.
Like a servant to its master.
Because when the mind is rich,
the rest must follow.
The paycheck finds the problem-solver.
The opportunities find the thinker.
The throne finds the visionary
who spent years building it
in solitude.

So study more.
Ask better questions.
Break what you know
and build it wiser.
Because intellect is the only currency
that survives every crash.

They may buy the room,
but you built the foundation.
And in the end,
those who seek wisdom
are the ones who rule.

No one is coming to tell you how.
No divine instruction manual.
No whispered secret from the wind.
You are the blueprint.
The task is the test.
And excellence—
that quiet, burning force within—
is not suggested. It’s required.

You weren’t given this burden to fumble it.
You weren’t chosen to coast.
You were meant to craft.
To carve the best possible path
from raw stone and stubborn will.

Others may shrug,
do the bare minimum,
pray for luck or blame the sky.
But you—
you shoulder the weight with intention.
Because if it must be done,
let it be done with honor.
Let it be a testament.

There are a thousand ways
to do something halfway.
But only one to make it yours—
to wear the result like a crest
on your chest,
knowing no one else
could’ve walked that road
with the same fire in their stride.

Responsibility isn’t a chain.
It’s a sword.
And those who fear it,
never rise.
But those who wield it—
they shape legacies.

You don’t just take the task.
You take ownership of its destiny.
You ask, “How can I make this better?”
Even when it’s good.
Especially when it’s good.
Because mastery doesn’t settle.
It refines. It reimagines. It reinvents.

And every moment you treat effort
as sacred,
you are building something eternal.
Not just a finished job,
but a symbol of your integrity.
A reminder that greatness
isn’t about the glory—
it’s about the grit.

So take the task.
Not lightly.
But boldly.
Find the best way forward,
even if no one else does.
Especially then.

Because to complete the mission
is survival.
But to elevate it—
to perfect it—
that is legacy.

Chaos has a language. It speaks in scattered thoughts,
racing heartbeats, and dreams that unravel by morning.
You feel it before you name it—
a weight behind the eyes,
a knot where clarity should be.
But the moment you pick up the pen,
something ancient stirs.
A primal magic in ink,
the kind that bridges storm to stillness.

You write the mess.
You spell out the wound.
You stop pretending the fire is manageable
and you draw the flames with honest hands.
Suddenly, you see it.
It has a name. A shape. A boundary.
What once was an unknowable shadow
becomes a charted storm—
still fierce, but no longer infinite.

You were not falling apart.
You were simply too full.
And the act of writing—
it is how you make space again.
Each sentence is a blade.
Every period, a pause to breathe.
You dissect the chaos
not to kill it,
but to understand it.

A problem on paper is no longer the beast in your brain.
It is half-tamed—
a creature seen and labeled.
And that is no small victory.
That is how healing begins.

When you make the intangible visible,
you strip it of its tyranny.
And what was once unspeakable
becomes a line in your story—
one you now control.

Do not underestimate the miracle
of seeing yourself on the page.
You are not broken,
just burdened.
And in the light of your own truth,
the darkness begins to lose its grip.

So write.
Not because it solves everything,
but because it solves something.
Enough to move. Enough to breathe.
Enough to remember:
You are not what you carry.
You are the one who names it,
faces it,
and lets it go.

The fear begins as a whisper—soft, almost kind.
A flicker in the shadows of thought,
a ghost of what could go wrong.
But you look. You listen. You feed it.
And fear, once invited, grows fangs.
You cradle catastrophe in your mind
until it sleeps beside your dreams
and wakes before your coffee.

The more you dread,
the more it becomes a self-fulfilling spell,
cast by trembling hands
and minds too haunted to see
that the thing we run from
is often drawn closer
by the thundering echo of our retreat.

You feared they’d leave—
so your anxious questions pushed them to the door.
You feared the fall—
and in bracing, you slipped.
You feared silence—
and your panic spoke loud enough to echo.

The universe listens not with judgment,
but with obedience.
And it moves
in the direction of your gaze.

Fear is a script you recite so often
that life begins to follow its stage directions.
It becomes the blueprint of breakdowns.
And once you expect disaster,
you live rehearsing it—
repeating lines that summon storms,
as if rain was your destiny.

But it’s not.

You are not cursed.
You are not doomed.
You are simply powerful—
and that power bends to belief.
So shift it.
Breathe life into faith, not fear.
Envision calm, not collapse.
See love arriving, not leaving.
See doors opening instead of locking.

Because when you choose to feed hope
with the same hunger you once gave anxiety,
the world responds.
The winds turn.
And suddenly, the monsters
become mist.
The worst-case no longer rules your mind.
And the life you feared
stops knocking
because you finally stopped answering.

Fear only wins
when you crown it king.

They told me I was born of stardust—
a soft echo spun from cosmic ash,
but no one warned me that even stardust
can be stepped on, swept up,
or forgotten beneath someone’s shoes.

I’ve been trying to shine in places
that worship shadows.
Kissed wounds into people who only
brought me their swords.
Let my chest be an altar for the broken,
but no one stayed long enough to pray.
Still, I gave—
my time, my truth, my trembling hands—
as if love were currency
and I could pay off loneliness
with interest.

But I am not debt.
I am not what they abandoned.
I am the sunrise stubborn enough
to come back every morning,
even when the world sleeps through my arrival.
I am the quiet resilience of oceans
pulling tides into rhythm
with a moon that never speaks.

I’ve learned the universe doesn’t apologize
for burning stars into oblivion—
it just makes room for new constellations.
And maybe I’m not meant to be
understood by everyone.
Maybe I’m here
to remind the forgotten
that they were never invisible.

So if you are reading this—
gripping your soul in clenched fists,
carrying the kind of grief
that leaks when no one’s watching—
know this:

You are not the wound.
You are the healing.
You are not lost.
You are the map someone else needs.
You are not too much.
You are the weight of light—
and that’s why they couldn’t hold you.