I stopped longing
to be understood
when the ones I thought
understood me
in my darkness
turned out to have knives
hidden under their tongues.
To all of the lights
who chose to dim
when I was in the darkness,
thank you for teaching me
that my own light
is all I need.
It feels like I have to
believe myself
and
teach people how to
believe me.
It feels like I have to
heal myself
and
teach people how to
help me heal.
Don’t tell me how
or when
to heal
if you didn’t live through my pain,
if your heart did not stop
and struggle
to be with mine
when I was burning
and turning to ashes.
Lose as many people as you need to
in order to not lose yourself.
No one worth keeping
in your life
is worth you
losing yourself.
When a hero is rising,
many will choose
to focus on the ashes at their feet.
Keep rising.
You are about
to start soaring.
I am so proud
of the warrior
I’ve created
from the ashes
that were meant
to bury me.
You are a soaring reminder of what they
cannot
have.
Look down
at your pain
all the way from the sky.
Look how small it is.
Look at how big
the world is.
Look at all of the streets
you can take.
Look at all of the mountains
you can climb
and soar above.
I have poems
and books
inside of me
waiting to be written
from the pain of humans
whose names history
will not remember
or miss.
When his voice
asks me now:
Who do you think you are?
the hero I’ve become
answers:
I am Najwa Zebian.
I am a hero.
I am a survivor.
A woman asks me:
“How could a man
like him
not want
a woman like you?”
The younger, more innocent me would say:
“Try sitting in my seat.
Try to understand
this
while being me.”
The older, wiser me says:
“He wants me,
but not in the way that
I want to be wanted.
He wants my untouched body
to be his heaven for one night
so he can leave it empty,
like his hollow soul.”
Don’t mistake his
lust for love.
I know that my kindness
hurts me,
but I will continue to choose it,
not because I’m naive
but because my actions define me.
Remind your heart that kindness
is always the answer.
If your pain doesn’t make
your soul softer and kinder
with everyone around you,
in the right way.
You can be angry
that you’re in pain.
You can be upset
that you don’t deserve
to be in pain.
Or you can be humble enough to say:
Pain is part of life.
And my ability to feel it
proves that I am human.
My wounds teach me
not to hurt others.
My scars have become
my friends.
They remind me
of how brave I was
to overcome
the pain of my wounds.
There is a part of me
that craves
not needing safety.
I no longer want safety.
I am a free bird
soaring.
To be kind
in a world that could be
so cruel
to kind souls
like you
must be the greatest
act of courage.
I heard
you’re hurting
because of what I said about you.
I heard you’re hurting
because of how I made
you look in the eyes of others.
I think you’re hurting
because you know that you
made a mistake
by hurting me.
I think you’re hurting
because of who I became,
because of who I am becoming.
And because you no longer
have the honor of being the one I love.
You are no longer someone I love.
You are someone I once loved.
Why should I feel bad
for you?
Why should I feel guilty
for not wondering
how you are dealing
with your truth being exposed?
When you were torturing me,
did you
for one moment
wonder how I was dealing
with what you
were putting me through?
I will never be okay
with what you did to me.
You have to be okay with that.
Regret without an apology is
cowardice.
It was not you
who I loved.
It was the person
I thought you were.
It was the person
you made me believe you were.
Not you.
I am free,
not because
you let me go.
I am free because
I let you go.
And set myself free.
I will not thank you for this pain.
I will not thank you for this destruction.
But I thank you for this lesson:
My demolition might not be in my hands,
but my reconstruction is.
Now that I have built my own home,
in every place
or person that I try to make my home,
my soul feels rejected.
My own home
feels like I am abandoning it.
The most painful rejection
is rejection of the self.
The soul’s denial of itself.
The heart’s refusal to love
itself before it’s loved
by someone else.
If you hate me because of
what happened to me,
I don’t hate you,
but
I also will not a
llow your hatred
of me to make me doubt myself.
I don’t want to be liked
by someone whose love is
conditional on shame.
If I lost your respect because
of what I went through,
keep your respect.
I don’t want it.
You don’t have to be okay
with me
or with what I did with
what happened to me
for me to be okay
with myself.
It will be a glorious moment
when you realize
that it is the world,
not humans,
that will give to you
from its heart
based on your intentions.
You can be a fighter
and have pain inside of you.
You can be a hero
and live with trauma.
You can be brave
and still need a break.
Give love from your soul
because you want to.
Because it feels right.
Not because you have to.
Take love
because you want to,
not because you’re afraid
of saying no.
Not because you’re afraid
of being alone.
Look how far you’ve come.
You rose above
what was meant to break you.
You are soaring.
You are a hero
reborn.
I have been soaring
for a while now,
and I am afraid
of burning again.
He said to me:
“I know you’re broken.
I know your soul has been shattered.
But you are beautiful
in a way that I cannot explain.
And I think that
being in love with you
would be
the beginning and end
of all beauty.”
He told me:
“Smile for once.”
Silly boy, my heart’s been smiling
since the moment you said:
“You can trust me.”
Since the moment you took my pen
and wrote
“Trust me”
on the pages of the journal
of my heart.
I’m afraid to allow love in
again
because I don’t know
what love is anymore.
For a while now,
love has been pain.
I want to shield myself from pain
again,
so I tell you
that I don’t want you to love me
because
you feel bad for me.
You tell me that
you can force people to do anything
except love.
You cannot force people to love you.
He says:
“You cannot,
did not,
and will not
force me to love you.
I just do.
I choose to love you.
And there is nothing
you can do to force yourself
out of my heart.”
Why do you want to love me?
I will traumatize you.
I hear your words
through my wounds.
I see your face
through my wounds.
I talk to you
through my wounds.
And I will love you
through my wounds,
just like your love will enter me
through my wounds.
“Look at me.”
Three words that cause
an earthquake in my bones.
I want to tell you
that I am falling for you,
but fear of this moment
stops me.
My heart reminds me:
Don’t allow room
for shame.
Tell the people you love
that you love them.
He tells me:
“I wanted to get you
one rose,
but I thought about you
twelve times today,
so twelve roses
are what I got for
the sun standing in front of me.”
My heart says:
One rose is enough.
He reminds me:
“Not for you.”
I’ve never wanted roses
to resist wilting
more than I do now.
That’s how I know
that I want this love
to last.
I tell you
there are things about me
you should know.
I’m afraid
they’ll make you leave,
but I tell myself
that I will not hide
parts of who I am
because of the person
that I want you to see.
He tells me:
“Your history is written
in your eyes.
In the way that you
look down
and to the side,
anywhere but into my eyes.”
He tells me:
“There is a truth that’s hidden
in your eyes.
You’re falling in love
or trying not to fall again.
And if you think
I don’t know
what you’ve been through,
you must think
I’m foolish at
love.”
I knew that our souls
were connected
when you told me:
“The sight of you
and the sound of your voice
stimulate my brain
more than
the touch of
all the women whose bodies
I have explored.”
How do I tell you
not to compare me
to other women?
Not to love me more
because you love them less?
Because you love her less?
Love me
for who I am,
not who I’m not.
Love me because
you love
me.
You stayed a short while,
but
you made me want to write
about love,
not heartbreak,
again.
Thank you.
AN INVITATION
If this book has moved you, then move. Lift up your pen and start writing your own story, however you’d like to write it. Don’t keep it inside of you if it needs to leave you. Don’t settle in the ashes of your pain. Let the sparks lift you up. Rise from the ashes as I rose. And soar.
Acknowledgments
Thank you
to every person who
loved me as I was burning
and turning to ashes,
not just as I was rising
and soaring.
Thank you
for loving me
when it was difficult.
About the Author
Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian author, speaker, and educator. Her passion for langu
age was evident from a young age, as she delved into Arabic poetry and novels. The search for a home—what Najwa describes as a place where the soul and heart feel at peace—was central to her early years. When she arrived in Canada at the age of sixteen, she felt unstable and adrift in an unfamiliar place. Nevertheless, she completed her education and went on to become a teacher as well as a doctoral candidate in educational leadership. Her first students, a group of young refugees, led her back to her original passion: writing. She began to heal her sixteen-year-old self by writing to heal her students.
Since self-publishing her first collection of poetry and prose in 2016, Najwa has become an inspiration to millions of people worldwide. Drawing on her own experiences of displacement, discrimination, and abuse, Najwa uses her words to encourage others to build a home within themselves; to live, love, and create fearlessly.
Sparks of Phoenix copyright © 2019 by Najwa Zebian. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
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