i found God

under fluorescent lights

i found God in prostration, where i go to find Him. my forehead is embraced by a textured white sheet. it liberates me of my irrational discomfort around white cloth. i used to imagine them all as shrouds. i visualize the one that carried my mother to her grave; may it be a garden in paradise.

i found God in the time between uncertain life and certain death.

my father lays in a synthetic blue bed and wires weave a wicker basket around him. i force myself to have faith, for if my belief in an afterlife were to waver, i would be annihilated. if faith unwrapped her sticky tentacles from around my body, it would cease to exist. conviction eats away at my brain, until all that is left is the part that would never doubt in a higher power. The Beneficent, The Supreme Bestower, The All-Knowing, The Giver of Life and Creator of Death. when the ground gives out from beneath your feet, what is it that feels like your tightrope? what do you cling to? tell me, i’ll try anything.

i found God in a hospital waiting room. there is intimacy, sharing deep pain with strangers who sit in the same hideous couches for weeks alongside you. the agony being a presentation of love, we all know the wistful way it feels. it becomes a place where we become familiar and kind faces, who pray concurrently to never see one another again. i begin to ask how her husband is, how his mother is, day after day. “no news is better than bad news”. marigolds and tulips add color to barren rooms. when all i know of you is your heartache, i know that what we have in common is enough. the air smells like gas station coffee, the same kind my father drinks. i wonder when we’ll be able to share a conversation over mini pancakes and scrambled eggs, again.

the waiting room

i look up at fluorescent box lights, as if they could replace the sun. as if a great albatross would fly down and snatch the lump out from within my throat. my eyes close so the tears would not blind me. its okay to not be okay. i keep forgetting that. so, i beg myself to feel, i walk around the aging red building and look through all the windows at stretchers and white coats. my fingers trace rugged brick and my lungs fill with smoke. week after week, meal after meal, friends become family in a hospital waiting room. the crowd warms me, and the aroma of cardamom from a thermos of chai gently draws me out from my usual reticence. we sit in the dark after visiting hours on those hideous couches, with flashlights. i found God in the breaths we took between paragraphs (in which i was allowed to forget for just a moment), as we took turns reading aloud the story of One Thousand and One Nights. the village i never knew i had lines a round table. silence is now a blessing i do not need to understand. we color and make paper airplanes out of gum wrappers, as we pass time and pray in the hospital waiting room. i cannot wait to gather the same, in my living room or by the lake. i imagine we will still be reading the same book.

because God’s plan is not mysterious at all. i argue that there are greater riddles in much lesser things. in that, i find secret relief.

in my newfound sovereignty, the white sheet became a blanket. it became a prayer mat or a mere cloth. it is true that you don’t know how much faith you have in Allah until you are forced to rely on it alone.

amidst calamity there exists a love that would otherwise remain unknown.