Missy Voices: A diasporic ode to summer
At Missy, we’re always looking to platform fresh, honest voices. This reflective essay by 16-year-old Mounia captures the bittersweet blend of burnout, cultural identity, and summer holidays through a lens we don’t often hear – and we’re honoured to share it.
With the closing of an another school year, the rays of sun begin to spark…..
a wave,
a change,
a season.
summer.
Schoolbooks thrown away,
piled mercilessly under my bed,
I lay.
Staring up to nothingness,
gone the days of tests, homework, and ceaseless list of todos.
a cycle of endless tasks, a cycle that ends
on the first of June.
I return.
With the spark of self,
gone is the robotic, coagulated figure of I.
I start.
With the papers and books in an orderly fashion,
a glimmer
of that once, chronically organised being
summoned again
I sit.
With pensive thoughts and reflections,
the void of academics
leaves me entrenched in self criticism,
“do more, be more, more, more,more “
I stop.
With a 16.4-inch soul sucking screen in hand,
my mind becomes numb,
body trapped
as the hours pass.
I cry.
With regrets on the past,
worries to the future,
misery for the present,
when ones soul, mind
or other reputable body
of consciousness,
depends on the drive,
sustains off the validation,
respires through the presence of academics.
The 100 percents,
top grades,
red pen commentary,
all constituting the A student.
However,
in timely hiatus of summer,
what fuels the individual?
What intercepts the void
of momentary success?
To this,
I understand my Achilles’ heel,
my ulterior fault.
For sitting now, within
a paperless, sticky note free bedroom,
I can observe. Explore. Create.
I realise that
from September 1st,
self is entrapped –
or more so, perpetrated –
by the scope of study,
an almost self-sacrificing path of
academic prosperity.
Though as the end line nears
of the yearly sprint,
I sustain momentum
past the metrics.
Leaving me in suite
for an end line
long gone
(Or far ahead)
Now,
with the first month of vacances
nearing an end,
a wish remains
to project my ode for,
what was once – the prime of my year.
Plane tickets booked,
hard shell suitcase in hand,
the 18 hour journey
to the homeland
begins.
Practising my سالم) hellos),
visualising the onset of
sunsets and road trips,
beach days and late nights,
the epiphanic experience of
a second generation immigrant.
Although I may seem
all over the place,
a passage of thought vomit,
from academic validation
to returning of a diaspora,
it is interlaced in my ode.
For without the strain
and shatter of the schooling months,
the profound joys
of July and August
turn mere blips in my year.
Words cannot express
the feeling which encompasses me,
as the airplane hits the runaway,
the ground of my second home.
Summer is defined for me,
not by June 1st,
but by the pilgrim to the place
where I most belong.
Surrounded by aunts and cousins,
grandparents and unknown relatives,
my insides enchanted with
an unquantifiable peace.
The tongue diverts
to its second passage,
forgoing the colloquialisms of nationality,
but instead
the words of roots, of blood.
With a throaty ق) Qah) and rolling ر) ra),
the mind adopts and adapts,
refining each vowel to
the local chime.
They say paradise is the heavens above,
but what if I already found mine?
I live for the vicious,
crashing waves of the Atlantic sea,
forcing me down as I rise up.
With a dive and a splash,
I combat even the treacherous of ocean commands.
I lie eternal.
for once,
no thought, no intention, no worry, nor fear,
overwhelmed with peace,
in the heavens of a homeland.
Racing along the wet sand,
I land crashing on my luminously coloured beach towel.
The suns rays striking
each cell of my epidermis,
stamping its mark with a tan.
My stomach beginning to vocalise
its yearn
for nourishment,
just as my motherly figure
prepares the beach day delicacy –
tuna sandwiches.
A bite and a sip,
A breath and a smile,
I have found the recipe to being alive.
Words:
Vacances – holidays in French
سالم = hello in Arabic
by Mounia
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