Long six years have passed since I stopped talking to my soulmate. Well, I actually never wanted to lose her, but I couldn’t give her the support she needed. And it brought the end of our relationship.

I’m a more different person than the person I was then, so must be she. Perhaps, we wouldn’t get along well now even if we hadn’t ended our friendship.

Yet, I felt she was my soulmate, and we would keep it work despite our differences and messiness.

Watching Firefly Lane broke my heart not only because it portrayed a beautiful friendship, but also…

One cannot celebrate Black History Month without considering every individual sacrifice. Numerous people have fought, several lives have passed away, and many psychological damages have been confronted. The struggle for equality has left us traumatized, not knowing whom to trust or where to belong in a hostile world.

One way to monumentalize those who paved the way for us and celebrate their courage is to narrate their stories — to remember, praise, and talk about them until not one soul is left, being ignorant about their victorious deeds.

To honor those persistent individuals and Black History Month, I narrate three…

There hasn’t been any writer who touched my heart with her talismanically inspiring hands, which carried me through imaginary journeys where I lost myself. No writer has shed my tears with poignant stories. For no author’s narrative, I sobbed during my literature classes. Freedom, self, womanhood, race have never become abstract concepts that tied me to humanity’s sorrowful well where despair, hate, anger, pain, and stagnancy merged inflow. But Toni Morrison.

Her novels caught me off guard whenever I followed her beautiful mind, soul, and storytelling. …

Nostalgia,
When I cried in my mother’s arms
Not to leave her and her charms,
Not to be a foreigner — defenseless.
When my father looked at me as if I was stillborn,
I did not want to be forlorn.

Nostalgia,
When the city welcomed me with its cloudburst,
Sending williwaws and making me a God-curst,
Throwing me from the sestiere to the lagoon — defenseless,
I attempted to have an unfaltering step
When the high water turned the city to a tempest-swept.

Nostalgia, When I faced the global crisis alone With the silent company of a pen, wine, and…

Take me from here then
From the palaces and cottages.
When the nonna sets the hen
Let’s escape from humanity’s collages.

Let us go from piazzas and merry children
From the garlic and tomato odour of the street.
When the dough swirls around the hands of women
Let’s escape before our hearts get concrete.

Let’s never look back at the half-deserted avenue
Of silence, desperate, poverty, and boredom.
When chalices collide, and songs begin anew
Let’s escape to the realm of wisdom.

The sun begins to approach the Adriatic
Its shades muzzle our human words. …

The rain fell on the windows — the only sound that gently touched my ear. The time and space I’d seemed to occupy began to fade down like a tiny fracture in the galaxy — wait, aren’t we bored of these metaphors, yet?

I used to love them. Cliched metaphors have a magical power that excites us whenever they catch our eyes. Most symbols (rain as the sadness, the sea as the rebirth, etc.) lead us to similar meanings, but their tones become so different in each writer’s narrative that they manage to seem innovative each time.

After studying English…

“No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much.’ Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much.’ […] Many of these young women are afraid to speak, let alone write. When I witness their fear, their silences, I know no woman has written enough.” — bell hooks, remembered rapture: the writer at work

History is a means to impose the principles of imperialism, patriarchy, misogyny, and racism on our fragile minds — all the evil phenomenons of our damned past that have brought us to this day. …

Fiction

No, I wasn’t expecting the dead bodies that came into view.

The cave was smoky, cold, and eerie. Suddenly, the disgusting smell dominated the air. I felt all my organs getting closer to my mouth. I wanted to vomit, get rid of everything taking space in my body.

My stomach, for I couldn’t take it more. My lungs, for I didn’t need to breathe. My womb, for I didn’t desire to become a woman. My heart, for I didn’t want to feel. My brain, every cell of it, for the remembrance was the worst disease.

I couldn’t take my eyes…