Roots and Wings

There is a quiet knowing that lives beneath the noise of the world. It does not shout. It does not beg. It simply waits—like a flame that neither flickers nor fades, holding its place in the dark until I am ready to remember. Some days, I wonder what it would be like to live without questions. To move through the world with a script, a guide, a certainty. But purpose, I’ve come to learn, is not always a destination. It is a return. A remembering. A commitment to walk with the unseen, even when the path disappears beneath my feet. My purpose does not announce itself in grand gestures or accolades. It comes in stillness. In the ache to write what can’t be spoken, to love what has been forgotten, to listen when everything else begs for attention. It is the pull I feel when my hands touch the earth, when my words reach another soul, when I choose truth over comfort—again and again. There are days when doubt knocks louder than clarity. When I am tempted to measure my worth by what I produce...

 There are dreams that come like whispers, soft and symbolic. And then there are those that arrive with weight, with presence, with messages wrapped in discomfort. This one unsettled me—not for its strangeness, but for what it stirred in my spirit. In my dream, I saw a Muslim woman—her presence serene, her demeanor modest. I saw her and felt drawn. Not to her outward image alone, but to what she seemed to represent: a chance at sacred friendship, a guide in faith, someone I could learn from and walk with. She approached me and spoke not of God, not of prayer, but of her desire to visit a man and make love to prove her love to him. Then, unexpectedly, she turned to me and asked for my opinion. I began to speak gently, “You see, I have ...” I barely began, when she silenced me with a kiss. It wasn’t a kiss of affection—it was a kiss of interruption. Her lips were covered in painful pimples, full of pus, and as she pulled away, some of it was left on mine. I stood frozen. She told me ...

 Some dreams don’t visit—they descend. They tear open something quiet within you and leave you weeping in the dark, unsure if what you felt was past or prophecy, your pain or that of generations. This was such a dream. I didn’t wake gently. I woke drenched in grief, a cry rising from my belly, as if mourning something far older than me. I was back in my village, in a place where the soil still holds stories. An elder grandmother—one whose presence is both familiar and enigmatic—stood speaking softly with someone. Her voice was calm, too calm, as she mentioned my siblings. “They were burned,” she said, “in the sugarcane field.” I froze. Something in me shattered. I walked toward her, heart pounding, demanding answers—“What happened? Where are they?” Her face did not shift. There was no urgency, no grief. Just a haunting stillness. And then—suddenly—I was there. Not just hearing of the place, but in it. The sugarcane field towered around me, thick, dry, ominous. I wasn’t alone. My si...