Loneliness's Dance / Dança da Solidão

As salaam alaikum,

Solidão é lava
Que cobre tudo
Amargura na minha boca
Sorri seus dentes de chumbo

Solidão, palavra
Cavada no coração
Resignado e mudo
No compasso da desilusão

Loneliness is lava that covers everything. Bitterness in my mouth. I smiled its leaden teeth. Loneliness, a word burrowed in my heart, resigned and mute, to the beat of disillusion.

I just met a man who is unreal. Like, I seriously didn't think I could be surprised anymore. I thought that that time was over, reserved for me at 19, not at 25 almost 26. I didn't know I'd be amazed anymore that someone could exist in a realm in which I also exist, and I less thought that it would be him, who on the surface is just like the rest of them, who on the surface I thought I could predict from his name, his face.

Never did I think that someone so much like me could exist, and that I wouldn't know him well enough to not have to get to know him. I thought I was it, but I am not. Muslims may disbelieve because of the circumstances in which this is all coming together but more than anything it seems like God made us for each other, three months apart, hundreds of miles away.

Prayerfully, I go forward.

Because I cannot let this pass me by. Because just like Paulinho Viola wrote, loneliness is lava that covers everything. Everything, everything, everything. It's molten and it stings, then it cools but it still covers and colors everything. It's heavy, it weighs you down, it obscures beauty and obfuscates emotion. It was bitterness in my mouth, unrelenting, all imaginings of love made bittersweet at best. "Nothing had the chance to be good, 'cause nothing ever could." I knew what was up, but I couldn't get past it. I tried to be happy in spite of it, loneliness. I smiled it's leaden teeth.

I personify it, but really, it's just a word. Loneliness is a word burrowed in my heart. It's still there. It still marks most of my early adulthood in which I found myself all alone, and I only felt like I'd only be alone for the rest of my life. Nothing seemed promising but loneliness for another day, and then another. And there it was, resigned, mute, hidden, inaccessible, irretrievable, in beat with my disillusion.

My disillusion, my growing disillusion, every day nothing happened, every month someone else got married and I was still single, every year that was the same old thing. My disillusion grew but I smiled loneliness's leaden teeth, grinned and bore it through.

I learned how to be through loneliness. I became a practicing Muslimah through this loneliness. It covered and colored everything, my desires, my prayers, my reason for being, my aspirations, my conception of my purpose of life. Through loneliness I've become the person I am today, trilingual, writing this novel, in love with Soul music, the latter because it gave me access to something that I thought I'd never feel.

Loneliness is, but with me it's no more.

No more loneliness. I just met someone who I didn't know could exist, which is something I've always wanted but something I never thought I could have. I didn't know that I couldn't know that he'd exist even while knowing him during this time.

So I'm sitting in my apartment, my roommates gone, and stopped by and saw me but he's also gone, and I'm alone, but I'm not lonely because insha'Allah I'll see him another day.

Loneliness no more. Now music sounds different. Pop was always hackneyed but now it sounds cheap compared to the real feelings. The more poetic of the lyrics sung by people like the Brazilians is exactly what I feel. The days feel different. The taste in my mouth, different.

No more leaden teeth.

And the disillusion is melting away.

Desilusão, desilusão.
Danço eu, dança você
Na dança da solidão

Disillusion, disillusion. I dance, you dance loneliness's dance.

We both danced it. And then we danced it with each other for a while but then we stopped and we looked at each other. We see each other.

Now, it's okay.

So, I guess it's time to sing a new song now.

E eu que era triste, descrente nesse mundo, ao encontrar você eu conheci o que felicidade, meu amor. - Corcovado