Belonging

I belong

in ways that never asked for permission.

In a green flag

rising even when the wind pushes back.

In daadi’s stories,

unfinished sentences,

meanings hidden inside her sighs.

In cardamom warming the air,

in rooms where laughter spills freely,

where love is loud

and silence rarely stays.

I come from people

who traded sleep for hope.

Who held their dreams quietly

so I could say mine out loud.

From hands shaped by sacrifice,

steady enough

to lift me higher than they ever stood.

I belong here too.

To Britain’s soft grey mornings,

to platforms humming with waiting,

to classrooms where I teach

and learn how to exist at the same time.

To that familiar question

that tightens in my chest,

where are you really from.

I belong to overlapping worlds.

Crescent moons and glowing lamps.

Bells and hymns and prayer.

Christmas songs meeting Eid embraces,

not seamless,

but sincere.

Somewhere in all this

I learned the shape of the in between.

Where words arrive smiling

but leave bruises behind.

Where curiosity leans too close to judgement,

and belonging feels conditional.

You are pretty for a brown girl.

Do you have to wear that.

Is your husband choosing your future.

But you are allowed to speak.

I have been named

in ways meant to make me smaller.

Too loud.

Too ambitious.

Too much.

But I am not too much.

I am enough.

I am my mother’s dua

whispered into the dark.

I am my father’s drive

that never learned how to quit.

I am every late night panic

that did not defeat me.

I am the girl they tried to box in

who learned how to build windows.

I do not belong

to assumptions made about me.

I belong to my story.

Not to shame,

but to becoming.

Not to silence,

but to every word

I once swallowed.

I belong

to the space I claim with truth.

To resistance carried gently.

To roots that echo with every step.

To my culture,

my scars,

my strength,

my name.

I belong

to me.