Essays

The day I am happy with your nearness 0:00/283.733333333333351× Idly scrolling YouTube for something to take me out of my funk, it finds me—the exact performance, I know it from the first notes, the tempo, the crowd noise—and suddenly I’m transported…I’m four,

Why is your heart sad?0:00/633.0881× There are things I am trying not to think about. And then, on this particular evening, a song appears in the algorithm. I don’t have it bookmarked. It’s one you sent me, when we first started messaging one another

When I was almost three, I cracked my head on the hearth in our family room. This was a big deal for a few reasons, not least the amount of blood that emerges at the slightest head wound, or the fact that I was so little, I could easily have

Sometimes you realize you’re an instrument of the universe. Certain moments happen that make it clear that just as you are aware of the destiny you are living, you are a character, a lesson, in someone else’s destiny. When I was 22, I travelled to Nepal. Kathmandu was

I write this now, thinking once again of Iraq, as we witness yet another unprovoked aggression against a West Asian nation, this time Iran. I weep for all the innocent dead in Iran, and Lebanon, and Syria, and I hope for these nations to unshackle themselves from colonial hegemonic brutality.