• go to bed earlier
• exercise at least once a day
• pray
• take nighttime walks
• find the time to finish all the unfinished poems
• find a hobby that makes being alone something to look forward to
• spend more time with zorro
• learn a new word every day
• eat less & eat healthier
• spend more time with my parents
• learn to let go
• take time to revisit the places that made you who you are: the house you grew up in, your old middle school, your hometown. these places may or may not be here forever; you definitely won’t be
• dream bigger
• study more
• identify your fears and refuse to let the...

• stay in one place your whole life
• eat at one restaurant and order the same exact thing everytime
• save up your money for a plasma tv instead of a plane ticket
• talk a lot about things that hurt you in the past
• try to relive those moments that hurt you
• have an affair with someone you don’t even find attractive
• refuse to forget someone who meant everything to you
• make it impossible for yourself to do anything without remembering that you used to do it with them
• miss out on everything
• remind yourself daily of how empty you feel
• find new ways to make yourself sad
• get drunk all the time

• go on a walk
• read your favorite book again
• bake / cook
• get out of the house
• watch a movie
• call a friend to hang out
• clean your room
• watch a ridiculous reality show that will make you feel better about your life
• write
• go on a car ride
• DON'T go on tumblr / facebook / twitter
• drink tea
• go to the neighborhood playground
• play with the dog
• go get some frozen yogurt
• wait a year from now where you say "holy shit, i can't believe i was going to kill myself"

• walking to lake anne to feed the ducks and buy blue raspberry lollipops
• our mutual obsession with parakeets
• sleeping next to her all the time, even now that i'm eighteen
• spilling ketchup all over the carpet (first & last time she ever yelled at me)
• teaching me my prayers
• the crazy number of plants she has in her apartment
• never saying no when i ask for a back massage
• going to thrift stores
• the amazing homemade yogurt she makes
• sleepovers at her house almost every week when i was younger
• her delicious pasta that many have tried to make and miserably failed
• spending monday afternoons at her house in elementary school
• teaching me how to sew

• opening my acceptance letter from au
• seeing drake perform in the pouring rain with seventy thousand other people in london
• seeing an owl for the first time
• first time i prayed alone
• november 8th
• jummah at the blue mosque
• driving around in the back of mel's truck

boys:

• idris
• yasin
• elias / ilyas
• deen
• julian
• laith
• junaid
• eli
• alec
• zakariah
• sufjan
• adam
• sultan
• qais
• owais

girls:

• riham
• laila
• aliya

• "I'm still writing about you and you haven't read a word."
• “There are a million ways to bleed. But you are by far my favorite.”
• "When the world pushes you to your knees, you are in the perfect position to pray."
• "There is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shore line, no matter how many times it is sent away."
• "I leave before being left. I decide."
• "I felt I was on fire with the things I could’ve told you. I just assumed you eventually would ask."
• “The heart will rest and feel relief if it is settled with Allah and it will worry and be anxious if it is settled with people.”
• “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”

• travel to see the northern lights
• be on good terms with everyone at one time
• spend an entire night stargazing
• visit a banksy mural
• learn a new language
• road trip to coachella
• backpack through a country with a blanket, cash, and a book
• wish on a shooting star
• have a poem published
• visit every continent
  • africa
  • antarctica
  • asia
  • australia
  • europe
  • north america
  • south america

• australia
• paris (again)
• alaska
• washington
• oregon
• british columbia
• machu picchu, peru
• england
• colorado
• afghanistan
• turkey
• chicago, il
• grand canyon & antelope canyon, az
• egypt
• morocco
• spain
• canada
• mecca
• dubai
• thailand
• provence, france (again)

• this too shall pass
• good things come to those who wait
• don't let your dreams be dreams
• make them wonder why you're smiling
• accept what you can't change, change what you can't accept
• good things will come your way
• you can't expect other people to make you happy
• when words fail, music speaks
• if you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never have enough. if you are thankful for what you do have, you will end up having even more
• everyone eventually leaves
• life begins at the end of your comfort zone
• carpe that diem
• what doesn't kill you fucks you up mentally (sadly)
• it'll all be worth it in the end

• laying in bed listening to music in the morning
• when my room is clean
• knowing you're the reason behind someone's smile
• the first step you take on another country's land
• maps
• sharing comfortable silences
• the idea of heaven
• when days get shorter and colder
• foreign accents
• discovering new music
• people who know the difference between "your" and "you're"
• adventure walks
• catching up with someone you haven't talked to in a while
• my grandma's hugs
• spending an entire day reading
• lists

• attend one of my top 5 universities
• live in the city
• get married (preferably to a man who wears cardigans and has a beard)
• live overseas for a year and learn the language (turkey, morocco)
• publish a poem
• have children
• drive up pacific coast highway, then up to british columbia

• "this too shall pass" in arabic on inner arm
• "patient, fine, balanced, kind" on wrist
• "i am, i am, i am" on lower neck / wrist
• mountain on wrist
• "i suffered, i learned, i changed" in arabic on inner arm
• grandma's eye/evil eye (back)

• logastellus:

a person whose love of words is greater than their knowledge of words.

• tristifical:

causing to be sad or mournful

• ya'aburnee:

the hope that you will die before you love because you cannot live without them.

• kenopsia:

the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs...

• "Your depression shows when you talk about home. You said, 'I can't wait to leave this town and go away on my own'."
• "I'm not afraid to watch you change me."
• "I don't need another friend when most of them, I can barely keep up with them. Perfectly able to hold my own hand, but I still can't kiss my own neck."
• "Even if things end up a bit too heavy, we'll all float on."
• "I thought I heard a plane crashing, but now I think it was your passion snapping."
• "It’s hard trying to hold on with all that I have lost. It all seems so wrong, but I trust you, oh God."
• "The greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others."
• "Somebody said that life isn't fair when somebody else was saying a prayer."
• "Take me to a place where I don't know an...