To Be the Child of the One Who Moved Away

means not having the context
for that one time

that the laugh, the inside joke

is rooted in

it tastes like... missing out

on the recipe meant to pass

hand over hand

in a kitchen continents

and languages away

it sounds like elders

who tell you you'll never

understand their brother

or cousins who mention

there was no way your

father's siblings could

have known about the abuse

he and you faced alone

on stolen land built out

by stolen lives within borders

created by people who

hate the tones of the earth in his skin

I recently learned that the shape

of "خانہ بَدوشْ" is the weight of

carrying home on your shoulders

I can't imagine a space so free

of that gravity

that I can float across the

distance of WhatsApp to say

any version of I love you and I

fight for you, but I also fight for me

because I did not consent

to this life between bordered lands

and I sometimes wonder what

it would be like to consent out

of carrying home on my shoulders

to rest

to be loved, not as a noun born

out of expectation but a verb

an adjective a synonym to creating

the context

for that one time

that our shared laugh, our shared joke

is rooted in

to be the child of the one who moved away

is a curse and a blessing I

would not choose to share

with anyone

to carry home on your shoulders

is a curse and a blessing I 

would not choose to share

with anyone

-----

every year the holidays remain a sucker punch to the gut. from the intact families wove've invited me in, to my solo binge watching sessions soaking in the quiet of being alone. I love my Pakistani family terribly. ferociously. longingly. confusingly. I love them across continents, countries, cultures, cultures, languages, and the ways in which white European colonization poisoned the lands across the world that we live on. I've both been told that I'm loved, to reach out at any time, and that I'll never fully understand my own dad, that the family didn't know my white bio mother harmed both of us because you can't hear abuse on a phone call, or through the emails she monitored, or in the body language around a table of home cooked food. I am loved as a noun, as Kariem's daughter, as accomplishments. as the ripples on the surface of water. 

I long for, I'm dying to be loved as a verb, as an adjective, as a synonym, as sometimes I trip over air and I struggle to stay mentally and emotionally alive, as a wave, as a whole ocean of mosaics of thoughts and feelings and experiences and personality. and I feel like I no longer know how to bridge the distance. the wright of carrying home on my shoulders feels like I'm treading water beyond where my tippy toes can find the floor. how is it possible to hold this much buoyancy, to maintain grace, to continue trying when it feels like any life rafts have already floated into the horizon. 

to be the child of the one who moves away, is to share entire bodies of water with the ones you love with no guarantee your wakes will ever more than collide with each other, with no guarantee you'll ever truly be able to understand the shape of the love for the one who moved away.