Category: Letters

For the one

When it looks so simple and straightforward the frustration can be immense. You must, however, remember that it only seems so simple because you see it so clearly. Your vision, despite multiple attempts at blending into the background, sets you apart. We see the picture clearer every time you speak – and I don’t imagine you ever say anything that…

Only for a nibble

But what happens when the hand that feeds you bites back? Do you hold back in complacency, in fear of dying of hunger or do you search for another way to find food? Tearing yourself away from everything you have ever known and once more diving into the deep, dark, dense, dungeon of doubt? You made it out before –…

For the Caterpillar

In many ways, I know that nothing I tell you will change the course of history. The vanity of time doesn’t allow it to be changed by the whims of men. And the nature of perception is so deeply coded in the ways in which we understand each other – in which we hide from each other. So deeply rooted…

For the Language Decoder

I promised myself I would not write to you until I found her. The cyclones in her semi- circular canal were heavy from the whirlwind that was caused by their spinning – so it took her a minute to find her balance. To be honest, I almost didn’t believe you. Lost hope several times along the way and nearly drowned…

For the Poet in Running Shoes

When it is all over for the day and you sit, waiting for the onslaught of dawn, which poets keep you awake? Do you whisper in couplets to Gibran and hear echoes of Lorde as the night washes away the ills of the day? There’s a spot on the roof. If you stand there at the right moment it is…

for a Mad Kenyan Woman

But bodies are just bodies and words are just words and love is just love and time only moves backward when words of love remember bodies. What’s it like to learn how to read bodies? Kureishi reminds me that bodies are often misread, misunderstood, misused, misplaced, misaligned. Bodies do funny things, so again I ask, how do you crack the…

She who spoke

It’s interesting how difficult it has been to begin this letter. So maybe a question. Do you often sit and wonder how many times you have had to say the same thing to the same people who continue to do the same thing? A silly question, I know, but one that I thought I’d ask none the less. Let’s say…

Mothertongue Blues

To the unremembering tongue the search for a history is often measured by two clocks ticking in different cities and two hearts beating to different rhythms. When here is there, and there is nothing more than a speck of soil, crushed under the feet of an excited conductor; then everything might seem to follow a path that would one day…