All My Rage

by Sabaa Tahir

“If we are lost, God is like water, finding the unknowable path when we cannot.”

I’ll survive this. I’ll live. But there’s a hole in me, never to be filled. Maybe that’s why people die of old age. Maybe we could live forever if we didn’t love so completely. But we do. And by the time old age comes, we’re filled with holes, so many that it’s too hard to breathe. So many that our insides aren’t even ours anymore. We’re just one big empty space, waiting to be filled by the darkness. Waiting to be free.

I miss things I can’t put into words because they were taken before I knew how precious they were.

Salahudin feels like home.

“The more you ask for,” she’d say, “the better. Because it means you’ve put your faith in something greater than yourself.”

She was not of my body or my blood, this child. But she was of my soul.

how we put so much value into material things—possessions or places. Shit that isn’t permanent. But to have meaning in your life, you have to find it in something greater.”

“Sometimes we hold on to things we shouldn’t. People. Places. Emotions. We try to control all of it, when what we should be doing is trusting in something bigger.”

Somewhere between the first listen and the tenth, I realize that I don’t want to be with any other boy. I never did. The only person I want is Salahudin. The only arms I want holding me are his. The only lips I want on mine are his. The only voice I want to hear close to my ear is his. Salahudin’s body is the one I want to explore. His laugh the one I want to share.

A mother carries her child’s innocence in her memory. No matter who they become. We carry our hopes and dreams for them and such things are woven into our souls as God is woven into the fibers of this earth.