one month into 2026

before i think myself away

vision board for 2025

30 days into 2026– and very little has changed. I am of the few masochists who still set themselves goals for the New Year– not because I am naive enough to believe with fireworks comes an instantaneous, radical transformation of the self (your vices are still your own, and won’t loosen their grip so easily). Every December, I find myself floating towards that Lucille Clifton poem, when it dawns on me that we are at the end of something–

i am running into a new year

and the old years blow back

like a wind

that i catch in my hair

like strong fingers like

all my old promises and

it will be hard to let go

of what i said to myself

about myself

when i was sixteen and

twentysix and thirtysix

even thirtysix but

i am running into a new year

and i beg what i love and

i leave to forgive me

It is important to set terms for yourself, yes? Especially after a year that can only be described as a fucking write-off at best. One where I can count the amount of social gatherings I attended or friends I embraced on one hand, where, in a shocking reversal of events, my body gave up on me before my mind (which was soon preoccupied with the primitive task of survival, with no space for hugs or wind or running into any fucking thing). Here are the ones I wrote on the 29th December 2025 (copied + pasted from my Notes app)--

‘2026: return to self (gently)

• reintegrate urself into society, see friends (body permitting); ur not dead yet

• create more!!!! watercolour / chalk (synesthesia paintings)

• memorise more poems (begin with the ones on ur walls)

• learn to play music!!! lyre and or the kalimba (think: neuroplasticity)

• spend more time feeding birds

• read under more trees (weather permitting). generally just read more

• and write more!!! substack + poetry

• don’t spend too much $$$ on LPs

• journal daily (yes. every single day.)

• more community work / volunteering

• rotation of 4/5 books at any given time (magic realism, novels/stories, poetry, psychoanalysis, literary/critical theory)

• watch more disney films / old school cartoons. watch more thinky films this year (once a month min, cinema pref)

• pray salah more consistently (ur anchor. there’s no peace without it)

• talk to God more (you miss Him)

• mail out your letters as soon as you write them ffs

• finish things and worry not what they look like. just get them done

• be done with uoft (and flee!!!) let this be ur last year entangled in THAT institution

+ carrying some on from last year;

love and revolt and writing, writing, writing!!! cataloging dreams, more consistent logs. letter writing as mode of communication w friends & loved ones (long, sloppy details from the heart, hand to pen to page, the way God intended!!!). also improve handwriting legibility. trial new recipes, construct menus !!! wear more colour. be less critical (of self). be less naive (with others) and remember:

1. you love this life, in spite of your clenched fist

2. the plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t yet exist

3. let there be love where there was once ruin

4. (and if not, let it be)’

It was sobering, really. I had no clue, this time last year, that all my tender dreams and moderate ambitions would begin to trickle away as early as March, smashed into nothing by June. How strange it is, to disappear from the world and not even mourn it, not having the capacity to mourn, even. My screensaver was the vision board I’d made. I dimly registered that sometime in August, when I turned it back on and actually read the words: ‘The sun will come up.’ Something I met with complete ambivalence. Not because I couldn’t believe it, but because I couldn’t really conceive it. Not then, in that fog.

Going back to my initial statement: very little has changed, yes. But some things have.

1. I’ve taken to memorising a poem every month. January’s is taped above my desk (will share below)

2. I have slowly, precariously — like a baby chick breaching the egg —returned to participation, to speech.

3. I tuned my lyre. Three of the strings broke.

4. I’ve not purchased a new LP this year (stopped perusing FB Marketplace, Discogs or Ebay)

5. I have read more this month than I did in December (most notably Audre Lorde, Joel Balkan)

6. I have finished taping things to my walls (for now; that externalised consciousness that I returned to over and over since August, only able to tape one or two pieces of paper up at a time)

7. Awo brought her healthy baby into the world (alhamdulilah!!!)

8. Was (finally!) referred to another rheumatologist.

9. That numbness is no longer grey (but it isn’t yet an ache)

10. I’ve returned to classes and have attended all the ones I intend to be a part of

Perhaps I’ll do this every month. A sloppy, hand-to-God honest reflection on the month that has passed, written all in one go, posted the very second it is completed (like an absolute psycho). Perhaps that is how it has to be, the antidote to this perpetual inertia. I may go to the cinema tomorrow. I may make a snowman tonight (less chance it’ll be knocked down before morning). I may hop on the bus with no destination in mind, until it loops all the way back home. I crave movement, motion, change. I’m in the midst of that Lucille Clifton poem. Twentysix. I beg what I love, leave to forgive myself. I no longer wait for a lightning bolt to strike.

January’s poem. Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”