By: Manal Rabiey
My patience is a canvas overflowing with colors written only in the Book of the Soul. From the outside, people think I am a white wall untouched by feeling, yet within me flows a spectrum only the Divine can see. Dense gray weighs upon my chest like a cloud awaiting Heaven’s command; deep blue pulls me into a silence resembling prolonged prostration; and a muted red glows in my heart like a dhikr that never fades.
They say I do not feel because they cannot perceive the withering green in my veins when hidden hopes break, nor the pale yellow seeping into my face when waiting grows long. They think patience is absence of sensation, when in truth it is a spiritual station of presence: carrying all these clashing colors inside and still smiling like an oasis in a thirsty desert.
I have come to know patience is not the death of feelings but their life veiled in light; strength is not in harsh features but in a heart that can embrace great pain with peace. I laugh while my smile is stitched with violet sorrow, and my silence drips with blackness dissolving into the sea of mysteries.
I am the daughter of the Station, ill with certainty, sheltered beneath God’s light when the flame of fear ignites within me. My patience is not coldness but a living remembrance tinting my days with hues whose light never dies.
