AlAnoud Writes

The night sits low,

unbothered, unhurried 

like someone who already knows

how the story ends.

A thin line of light

rests on your table,

pretending not to care

where you’re headed next.

You breathe, steady,

as if the world finally moved

at your pace

for once.

No searching,

no noise 

just the quiet understanding

that some seasons change

only when you decide they should.

And in that stillness,

everything soft you thought you’d lost

returns,

without asking for permission

In fields of green where gratitude takes flight,

Beneath a bright blue sky with clouds so white,

The sprinklers spin their rainbows in the air,

And the divine’s soft love touches us in light.

We work and yet we dance on waves of breeze,

A Sufi spin of thanks and sacred ease,

The sun’s warm touch, the whisper of the day,

In every shade of green, the heart finds peace.

So gratitude becomes a sacred rhyme,

A flowing love that meets us every time,

The divine embrace that holds us near,

In every breath, we feel the love sublime.

Sunshine drapes the morning air,

A quiet warmth, a gentle prayer.

It slips through branches, soft and pure,

A golden touch that feels secure.

But deeper still, beyond the sky,

There shines a Light that cannot die

Light upon Light, serene and true,

A guidance flowing through and through.

Not every glow is seen by sight;

Some radiance dawns within the night.

Not every path is ours to choose

For God leads to His Light whom He wills to guide,

and hearts awaken when He decides.

The sun may rise and warm the day,

But His Light shows the truer way

A flame that lifts us from the dust,

That turns our fear into quiet trust.

Where truth is sought, His Light appears,

In whispered hope or falling tears.

A calm, a spark, a voice inside

The trace of mercy none can hide.

So let the sunshine grace your face,

But seek the Light that grants all grace.

For suns may fade and stars grow dim,

But God’s own Light returns to Him.

I was a wanderer of my own dust,

lost in the alleyways of “I” and “me,”

until the Heart’s Thief came

silent as dawn,

swift as a flame through dry reeds.

We think we walk the path,

but it is the Beloved

who drags us by the soul.

I cried out,

“Come to me,

let me see You,

let me taste the wine hidden in Your sky.”

For what is love

but the ache that empties us

of all but longing?

Beloved,

You heard me.

When Your Presence arrived,

every earthly sweetness

became a broken cup.

A thousand heavens

could not contain the joy

You poured into a single breath.

Who am I?

A mirror wiped clean.

A candle whose flame

has forgotten its name.

When You entered,

I vanished.

The caller disappeared.

The call disappeared.

Only the Answer remained.

There is no “I” left

to say “I love You”

Love itself speaks now.

Beloved,

when You finally took my name,

You left no trace of me behind.

The drop returned to the Sea,

and the Sea

remembered it had always been one.

Come,

let the world fade.

Let us drown again

in the sweetness where

the Lover

and the Loved

are one.

Suddenly,

it feels as though life never stands still

circles shift,

faces enter,

faces fade,

and nothing holds its place for long.

Even beliefs loosen,

re-form,

become new.

Yet everything turns

around one silent pillar

Him.

He.

Thee.

To see this clearly takes time.

The process is not always kind,

but I am strangely fascinated

by the recognition of it

even the heart refuses constancy.

And I wonder,

quietly,

what waits for me next.

I pray

that my steps fall upon the right path.

My past is full of gentle treasures

I carry with gratitude

but here, now,

today,

I learned something simple and profound:

Striving for good,

seeking to transform one’s state,

does not contradict contentment.

السعي في تحصيل الخير وتغيير الحال لا يتنافى مع الرضا

2021

I am writing.

I find myself here every night, typing

my notes, my therapist, my friend,

my fear, my enemy without an end.

Something rises, taking over me.

I hold a tear that won’t let me be,

a tear that bothers me because I can’t see

where it was born or what it wants from me.

There’s a quiet blast inside my chest,

a trembling rhythm that won’t rest

a melody my heart tries to confess

in scattered notes I can’t address.

I feel like a piano; old, worn, beige,

a rustic relic from another age,

standing on legs exhausted by weight,

playing out feelings I can’t translate.

What am I saying? Who would understand?

I suffocate in silence, sinking in notation land.

There’s a burden unseen, my hidden plea.

Can you hear the piano’s keys inside of me?

I guess not.

So I play till my fingers bleed

and somehow find beauty in the thing I need:

how the red from my hands stains ivory clean,

matching the piano’s keys like it’s part of the scene.

Here I go again, walking the dark,

finding light in a place without sparks.

The rest stays unspoken

unshared,

unimportant.

I am done.

After work.

After school.

After a night that tasted of friends and noise,

or a day that ached quietly inside the chest.

I wait at a red light.

The city breathes in sleep 

a low hum under the wheels,

a whisper from the street lamps.

The moon changes her face 

sometimes whole,

sometimes broken,

sometimes gone.

Yet the light falls the same on my hands,

on the steering wheel,

on the road that forgets every name.

There is no music now,

only the soft click of time.

The heart slows, the air forgives.

And through it all 

the laughter, the silence, the ache 

one presence remains:

a love too quiet to be seen,

too vast to be touched,

yet close enough

to breathe beside me

at the red light.

When He wills a thing, no struggle, no delay.

No forge of time, no dawn that waits for day.

The breath before the word is not yet born,

And still creation stands, complete, adorned.

He says but Be .. and mountains rise in awe,

Seas unfurl in tremor at His law.

The stars, once whispers in the silent deep,

Awake in praise from their eternal sleep.

No craftsman’s hand, no measured mortal art,

Can trace the pulse that moves the cosmos’ heart.

For when the Hidden speaks, all veils decay..

And void turns light, and dust learns to obey.

So fragile thought, bow low, unmake thy claim..

All worlds are syllables within His Name.

For in that utterance، beyond reason’s shore، 

Lies mercy, power, and the evermore.

“His command, when He intends a thing, is only that He says to it: ‘Be,’, and it is.”

A scent drifts 

not through air, but through the unseen.

It finds the pulse beneath stillness,

the soft hum where spirit and skin meet.

I once wore it in a moment without noise,

when the world unfolded like incense smoke 

slow, infinite, forgiving.

Now, when chaos presses close,

the same scent rises,

and the air bends toward peace.

It is not the perfume that calms me,

but the echo it carries 

the memory of a lighter self,

a soul unburdened,

a whisper that says: you’ve been here before.

Every molecule is a prayer in disguise,

every breath a small return

to the quiet place I built inside.

And so I wear it 

not for others to sense,

but for my spirit to remember

the way home.

Because beauty lives in the unseen 

in the still fragrance that follows gratitude,

in the tender knowing

that even a single breath

is touched by the divine …

There is a calm
in the spaces between things
the second before coffee cools,
the moment when sunlight folds
across the corner of a desk.

I have learned that silence
is not the absence of sound,
but the shape of understanding.
It holds what words can’t carry,
and returns it gently, like memory.

I move through days
collecting these fragments
a look, a word, a thought half-finished
each one proof that beauty still exists
quietly, without reason or permission.

And though the world rushes forward,
I linger
not because I am lost,
but because I have found
something worth slowing for.

I was born in a land that shaped me,

but did not claim me.

And I hold the passport of a place I’ve never called home.

I exist in the quiet spaces between flags and forms,

where belonging is not given,

but slowly, fiercely created.

I am not lost.

I am layered.

I speak in blended tongues.

I think in echoes of multiple homes.

I walk with memories and dreams that belong to more than one place,

and none at all.

I am a child of in-betweenness … 

not lesser for my complexity,

but stronger because of it.

No border defines my worth.

No system defines my soul.

Wherever I stand, I bring the fullness of me:

my voice,

my scars,

my grace,

my roots.. however tangled.

I do not need a stamp to say I belong.

I declare it myself:

I belong to the earth, to those who see me,

to the stories I carry,

and to the self I am still becoming.

I belong to earth. 

I am “home” for those who want love. 

Blessed by God and blessing everything I touch.