Earth, Wind and Fire

The flame that once gasped and fluttered.
The flame that once relented to the storms around her.
The flame that turned into embers, a ghost of its original brilliance.
The flame that allowed this world to slowly extinguish and suffocate her.
That trembling flame burned herself to ashes, until nothing was left but to be reborn.

This unrelenting resolve was in you, little flame.
Forgotten, but never silenced.
Waiting to be remembered,
reignited and reunited

with your
Eternal
light.

She holds storms within her. 

She is a house with windows and doors open, and
cracks between the floorboards.
She lets in the gusts like a gracious host
welcomes and embraces a guest.
The winds are the struggle, regret, the loss, and   
heartache of those she loves.
She lets it all in the moment she hears or senses it,
hoping to relieve them of their distress.

Hoping they will love and receive her in return.

The trapped winds build into a turbulence, searching for release.
But she keeps them, despite the dangers,
to whirl about inside as she carries them wherever she goes
awake, asleep, doing laundry, at the park, buying groceries, at meetings.
They’re always in her.

But these are not her winds to tame, to protect, to soothe, to carry.
Who told her they were hers?

You see, she was never taught how to protect her house,
to tend to her rooms.
To be her own relief. To soothe herself. 

She didn’t know she could shut the door.
She didn’t know the winds were not hers to let in or hold.
They never were.

She is a house, learning to patch its cracks, and
close her doors to the winds she mistakenly thought were love and devotion.

I came from this dust.
Wherever I may wander, the land walks with me.
Look closer—can you see it in my eyes?
The rugged mountains and vastness of the north,
the forests and rolling hills of the east,
the baked desert of the south, the arid plains of the west.

The passage of a thousand suns is hidden behind these eyes of an Afghan.
The stories, the scent, the memories of my ancestors are preserved on this earth.
They live in my gestures, how I speak, and in the way I love and care for others.
The legacies that are heart-breaking and will break the heart open,
My body carries their imprint as the land preserves its relics.

I have distant feelings, memories, sensations
of my history and lineage, but I never lived it.
What is that?
How do I place that on a diagram, a map or history book? 
Would it hold more weight in the world if I could place it there?

The soil, the dust, the earth I came from matters.
Deeply, wholly, unequivocally.
It holds the story of my – our – collective.
And we carry their legacies of faith, fortitude and forbearance.
Their pain and survival, their lessons and blessings, their losses and victories.

I feel them so deeply you’d think I lived it all, and I believe I did.

My body carries these legacies, passed down  
from my parents and those before them.
The food they shared, the love they shared,
the joy they shared, the life they shared.
It has a pulse. In my beating heart.

So, why act small and singular,
when we walk on the shoulders of our ancestors.
And if so, then how can we forget the soil from which
we grew, that earth reflected in our eyes and one day
the dust to which we, too, shall return.