I grieve a life I’ve yet to live, For all the love I have to give. Not for a love that came and passed, But for a future fading fast.
I carry stories through my days, Small little moments, quiet ways A thought I wish I could impart, A passing joy, a tender part.
So many things I long to tell, So many moments I would dwell Upon, if there were someone near To catch the words I hold so dear.
I miss the memories yet to be, The unwritten life that waits for me; The photographs I’ve never taken, The conversations left unspoken.
How strange to mourn what isn’t gone, To grieve a night before the dawn; To miss a hand I’ve never held, A story that has yet to tell.
And yet, I’ve lived. I’ve moved. I’ve grown. I’ve built a life entirely my own. I have not paused, nor have I stayed I’ve simply carried what I’ve craved.
But when the day gives way to night, And all the noise slips out of sight, The quiet brings the ache anew: There is so much I’d give to you.
Not grand romance, nor vows, nor rings, Just someone there for ordinary things Someone to hear the smallest part, The passing thought, the hidden heart.
Someone to laugh about the day, To hear the things I’d throw away As insignificant, yet somehow They’re the things I wish you knew now.
And perhaps that is the cruelest part: To have so much and nowhere to start. To hold a thousand words inside With no familiar soul beside.
For time moves on, indifferent, Each precious hour already spent. And I can feel the seasons turn, While waiting for what I cannot earn.
Yet still, beneath this quiet grief, There lives a stubborn kind of belief That what is absent is not lost, And what is late is not the cost.
Perhaps one day, without a sign, Your ordinary life will meet with mine. And all these stories I have saved Will find the person for whom they were made.
Until then, I’ll live. I’ll laugh. I’ll grow. I’ll let the days continue to flow. But somewhere underneath it all, I’ll keep one wish, however small:
That someday, at the end of the day, Someone will ask, in the simplest way not “How are you?” or “Are you alright?” but “Tell me everything about your night.”
I have begun to suspect that no one is ever a stranger.
We only meet the old in unfamiliar forms.
In the beginning, there was a classroom small hands, bright faces, names we thought we would remember forever.
And then we grew.
High school arrived with its new corridors, new laughter, new alliances.
Yet somewhere among them was the friend from first grade wearing a different face, carrying a different story, asking the same old question:
Will you stay?
Then came the university, and with it a wider world.
New people. New versions of ourselves.
But there was always someone who felt strangely familiar a childhood companion returned as a stranger, an unfinished friendship given another body.
And later, work.
The adult world.
We called them colleagues, but sometimes they were the children we once knew.
The old rival. The old confidant. The one who misunderstood us. The one who saw us before we knew how to be seen.
Even love is not exempt.
Lovers arrive carrying echoes of people who passed through us before.
A gesture borrowed from someone lost. A silence belonging to an old friend. A tenderness that reminds us of a person we thought we had forgotten.
And perhaps this is why familiarity can feel so much like fate.
Perhaps life does not move in a straight line.
Perhaps it moves like water fluid, returning, taking the shape of every vessel without ever becoming the same water twice.
We call them new chapters.
But maybe the characters are recurring.
Maybe existence keeps changing the names until we finally understand the lesson.
The friend returns as a colleague.
The stranger becomes the lover.
The lover becomes the memory.
The memory becomes the wisdom with which we recognize the next one.
And every season brings us another variation of something we have already known:
a beginning disguised as an ending, an ending disguised as a beginning, a wound returning not to hurt us again but to ask whether we have learned how to heal.
Perhaps that is what time does.
It does not erase the past.
It rearranges it.
It takes an old story, changes the setting, changes the faces, changes our place within it
and waits.
Waits to see if we will repeat ourselves or finally write a different ending.
So I no longer wonder why certain people feel familiar the moment they enter my life.
Perhaps they are not.
Perhaps I am simply recognizing something in them that has already lived in me.
And perhaps every person we call a stranger is only an old question arriving in a new voice.
A new season.
A new face.
The same river.
And us
never quite the same as the last time we stood beside it.
There are some loves that never need a name, They live beneath the heart, beyond the claim; They ask for neither witness nor reward, Yet through a lifetime, hold us just as hard.
And there are homes that choose us without word, Before our birth, before our voice is heard; A place becomes a heartbeat, not a stone, And somehow, through the years, it feels our own.
For eighty years, I have breathed beneath this sky, Watched generations come, watched others say goodbye; I learned its roads, its seasons, sand and rain, And every distant journey brought me home again.
They said I was not yours, at least by law, A line upon a page became the flaw; The paper could not see what years had known, Nor count the roots that quietly had grown.
I was not given what a name can bring, No formal claim, no seal, no golden ring; No document declared what I had known That sometimes belonging does not need to be shown.
And yet, my heart had made its choice long past, Not for a moment, but a love meant to last; No hand compelled me, no reward was due, I simply loved this land because I knew.
And in that love, there was a face I saw, A father’s warmth beyond the written law; His Highness, Hamad, Father in my heart, The man who made this place and me not far apart.
I never stood before you as I dreamed, I never said the words my heart had screamed; I never had the chance to make you see How much your presence had meant home to me.
Perhaps you would have smiled and understood, Perhaps you would have known exactly as you should; Perhaps one look from you would have made clear The things I carried silently for years.
I wonder now, if you had known my story, If you had seen the love beneath the glory, Would you have wondered why I never came? Would you have asked why I was not given a name?
Would you have known I never turned away, That I remained through every passing day? That I expected nothing at your door, And still somehow felt I owed you more?
No help was promised. No favor came. No recognition ever called my name. No hand was stretched to ask me where I stood, No one had to tell me that I should.
And still I loved.
Perhaps that is what hurts the most today That I loved without asking you to stay; I loved without a promise in return, Without a bridge, without a light to burn.
I loved you without ever being seen, Without the comfort of knowing what it means To stand before the one who felt like home And say, “I have been yours, although alone.”
And now you have departed from this earth, And suddenly I question what my worth Will mean to those who measure love by law, By citizenship, by what the papers saw.
Will anyone remember what I gave? Will anyone see what my heart tried to save? Will anyone believe the truth I knew That I belonged to this place because of you?
Or will the years dissolve into the air, As though my love was never really there? Will loyalty remain invisible still, Because a document refused to call it real?
I wonder what you might have thought of me, If you had known the truth completely. If you had heard the words I could not say, Would you have looked at me another way?
Would you have asked, “Why was she left unseen, When all these years she lived as though a queen Of nothing but her loyalty and grace, Calling this country home, her resting place?”
Would you have understood the strange despair Of loving something deeply, yet not knowing where You stand within the story you have lived Giving all your heart, yet never being given?
Perhaps you would have told me not to fear. Perhaps your smile would have brought the answer near. Perhaps you would have simply looked at me, And said, “My child, you have always belonged here”
But life does not return the words we lose. And death is cruel in what it makes us choose. It leaves behind the questions without end, The conversations we can never mend.
It teaches us through absence, not through grace, It takes the warmth and leaves an empty place; And only when the voice has disappeared Do we understand how much that voice was dear.
Death is a hard and merciless teacher, It makes the distant suddenly grow nearer; It shows us what we never stopped believing, And what we lost while thinking we were leaving.
And now I look at this familiar land, And somehow feel I do not understand How something that has always felt so near Can suddenly seem different through a tear.
The streets are still the streets I used to know, The skies still hold the same familiar glow; The sea still meets the shore the way it did, Yet something in the heart has changed and hid.
Because you were not merely someone there You were a presence woven through the air. A fatherly light, a quiet, steady flame, A reason why the word home felt like your name.
And now I wonder what tomorrow brings, What fate will write beneath these changing wings. Will life reveal a door that opens wide? Will someone finally stand there by my side?
Will the help I needed find me in its way? Will someone hear the words I could not say? Will someone see the loyalty I kept, The promises I made while others slept?
Perhaps now, beyond the limits of this life, Beyond the noise, the politics, the strife, You can hear the things I never could convey, The words that never found their proper day.
Perhaps there is an audience beyond the grave, A final chance to say the love I gave; No protocol, no distance, no decree, Just you; and the truth of what you meant to me.
And maybe you can finally understand Why I could never call another place my land. Why, even when the world said I was wrong, My heart had known this place where I belong.
I never needed you to know my name. I never needed recognition, praise, or fame. I never loved you for the things you could provide; I loved because my heart had already decided.
And perhaps that is the purest love can be To give without demanding someone see. To hold a place inside your soul so deep That even death itself cannot make it leave.
So yes, I am grieving more than I can say, And yes, a part of home has gone away. And yes, I sometimes wonder, through my tears, What life will look like after all these years.
But I will not let the sorrow take the truth: My love was never measured by a proof. No law can rewrite what my heart has known, No missing document can make me less at home.
I was never given what I thought was mine, Yet somehow, still, your home became mine. I was never called by the name I sought, Yet I carried you in every thought.
And if the world never understands this love, If it cannot see the place it came from above, Then let the heavens hold what earth could not The love that stayed when recognition did not.
Let history remember, if it can, That belonging is more than the law of man. That some of us are citizens in the soul, Long before the state decides who is whole.
And if one day my story reaches you, Beyond the skies of white and burgundy hue, I hope you will look down and finally see The child who loved the home you gave to me.
Not for a favor. Not for a throne. Not for a title to make it known. Not for a handout, not for a reward But because loving you was loving my homeland restored.
And if you could ask me, “Was it worth the pain? To love so much and never ask again? To stay so long without being claimed?” I would still answer, though my heart is maimed:
Yes.
Because some loves are not possessions. They are vows without confessions. They are roots beneath the sand, They are a lifetime given to a land.
And some fathers never hold your hand, Yet somehow teach your heart where you should stand. Some fathers never hear the words you say, Yet their warmth can guide you all your days.
You were that warmth to me.
And now, when I look toward the evening sky, I will not only ask the reason why. I will remember what your life became A chapter written deep beneath my name.
I will carry you with quiet pride, With all the love I never placed beside Your chair, your door, your presence, face to face Yet somehow carried through this very place.
And when the white and burgundy lights appear, I will remember you, not only with a tear. I will remember that despite what was denied, My heart chose you, and never changed its side.
Perhaps I was never given the right to say That this was home in every possible way. But I do not need permission anymore My eighty years have already kept the score.
So rest, Father.
And if the heavens let you hear The hearts that call your memory dear, Then hear mine too, though it comes late:
I loved you before I knew it was a fate.
I loved this land before I knew the cost. And now that you are gone, I know what I have lost.
I lost the man I never had the chance to meet. I lost the warmth that made my home complete. I lost the possibility of one day being seen. I lost the words that might have lived between
A father and a child who never knew How much the child had always loved him too.
But even in this grief, I will remain Through every quiet loss, through every pain. For love like this was never meant to end Simply because death took away the friend.
And maybe, somewhere past the stars above, You finally know the measure of my love. Perhaps you see what no one else could see:
I did not need to be claimed to belong.
I only needed to love.
And I did.
I do.
I will.
Through every white and burgundy light, Through every morning, every endless night, Through every road this lifetime asks me to roam
If one day you find yourself stopping for no reason at all,
and a familiar warmth settles softly on your shoulder,
don’t ask whose hands it was.
Some things return to us without footsteps, without names.
I have buried every unspoken word beneath a tree that has never forgotten spring.
When its branches bloom, they will not carry flowers.
They will carry every kindness we almost gave, every goodbye we could never finish.
The wind will gather them gently, and the sky, knowing nothing of our story, will scatter them across someone else’s lonely afternoon.
Perhaps that is how love survives .. not by remaining, but by becoming something the world mistakes for a breeze, a ray of sunlight, or the sudden feeling that everything, for just one quiet moment, will be alright.
The soul may weep for passing days, Yet knows this world is but a phase; True peace is found when one lets go, And leaves behind what cannot stay.
No home awaits when life is done, Except the one our deeds have spun; If built with good, it shines above, If built with wrong, its light is none.
Where are the kings of wealth and might, Who ruled the earth with pride and right? Death raised its cup before their eyes, And turned their glory into night.
Their vaults were filled with gems and gold, Their banners flew, their tales were told; Yet all they owned passed to new hands, While they grew silent, still, and cold.
We walk among the dust of years, Of broken hopes and vanished spheres; The world remains, but all who claimed Its lasting love have disappeared.
So hold not tightly what must fade, Nor trust the shadow wealth has made; For every crown returns to dust, And every debt of life is paid.
Seek then a treasure time can’t steal, A truth no passing age can seal; For what endures when all else ends Is not what shines, but what is real.
AlAnoud Writes 