this autumn

Time's going by pretty quickly now-a-days. This must be how adults feel when they realize that they're not so young anymore. Time never used to slip out of my fingers like heavy, black, silky hair, it never used to drag me by my own hair either. Now i see hours dissolve in 5 minutes. I turn 17 tomorrow. That number looks bigger than me. Maybe i'm not a real 17 year old. i don't feel like a 16 year old anymore though. 16 looks a little smaller than me, not tiny, but maybe almost my size. Maybe i'm nothing. I'm not any age. Does anybody else ever have this feeling? I feel like im nothing, im not 16 or 17..not even between. Maybe i'll wake up tomorrow and i'll be all different, a growth spurt maybe, more cheek bones, maybe some depression. Are 17 year olds depressed? Or hot? Maybe i'll feel completely different tomorrow, maybe i'll do something different tomorrow. maybe some timed biological happening will happen, like at the exact time that i turn 17 i'm supposed to turn blue or my feet are supposed to get bigger. My hands do look kind of different from a year ago, 5 years ago, 8.

I think i should see a doctor. A psychiatrist. And a regular doctor. I never really recouped from my trip to iran in '08. I never really recouped this time around either.

Around 6 weeks into my trip, i started to realize that i couldnt keep up with everyone that i walked with. This was also true when i would walk with taller friends here in america, but it wasn't that i was short, i was actually out of breath, as if i had ran a mile. The sun was hot, my feet were hot, my body was hot. Too many layers for the arid summer climate of tehran. As i walked and puttered to lurch myself, like a racing horse, to the pace of my cousins or aunts. It was as if i was pushing through a thick substance, even the air was holding me back. The smog, we were walking through this dirt and gray every day. And as i pushed on i could notice i was holding my breath, and i felt the pain in my head from it. A whimper, a grunt, a hesitant inhale, my lips afraid to suck in all this poison. A perspiration, this discharge that was seen so much of. In the morning i would walk out with straightened, clean hair, when you'd touch it it would slide and twinkle, then in the noon i would blow in to my grandmothers home that smelled like death gasping for air. My face and hands felt suffocated, covered with a film, my bangs sticky with this. On the white bowl of a sink, i could see the film in liquid form, a yellow grey color, the carbon, the burned diesel, the dirt, my own fluids. What would they say; All those sweetly dressed gypsies who listen to Sasy Mankan and the soft skinned boys with beards and groomed eye brows who winked at me in the taxi, smiled at me on the street, blowing raspberries at me in the subway, telling the world how immaculate i seem. What would they say if they saw this sewage washing off of my face. In my room i would undress, pulling hot clothes off leaving them on the floor and throwing clean white shirts on. I would tumble on to my bed and feel my muscles, my skin, my arms and legs, my back, everything be pulled down by gravity, a settling pain. My heart, it was beating, gasping, not steady, sputtering, tripping. my head fell to the sight of my cloths, like an elephant tried them on, rolled off and left on the floor to sort of die. i felt like them. i sat up to see my grandmother in the living room, her feet would move inch by inch, and with every soft jerk, her dress would flutter in front of her ankles. she was bent over. she was always bent over. thats what old people do. bend over while walking, like they lost their thoughts on the floor.

مریم خوشال کجاست؟

مریم خوشال کجاست؟ کجا رفت؟ مریم را كه هروقت میخواند، هروقت لبخند کشیده، هرروز یاد میگیر، هرروز نور توی چشماش بود.

where is happy maryam? Where has she gone? The maryam who always was laughing, always smiling, always learning new things, always was light in her eyes.