July 11, 2026
"Maxaa kaa maqan?"—"What is missing from you?" It is a question many of us have heard when trying to explain invisible pain. This reflection introduces the story behind my poem, Maxaa Kaa Maqan?, and explores the space between gratitude for what we have and the emotional needs that are often left unseen. Sometimes the things we are missing cannot be touched or counted—they can only be felt.
February 27, 2026
Quietly, my sister said she never felt like she truly belonged. She was naming something so many bicultural, bilingual 1.5- and second-generation immigrants carry: the ache of living in between, of being neither here nor there.
Then she said, simply, “She died for our belonging.”
I nodded and added, “She could have been doing anything else that day. She could have just gone home.”