IX. Zahira, the Origin Myth

Every single morning, I write.

Stories, myths, legends. Because sometimes the pain we carry feels that real, that big. It isn't a tear, it's the vast desert of "not enough." It isn't a longing, it's an ancestral pull.

Grief, hurt, trauma can grow too large to metabolize through ordinary language. So we create myths. Some last generations. Some live only as a family story, a whispered superstition.

My line begins with Zahira. The first Arab mermaid. A powerful enchantress who loved completely, lost herself in that love, and in one moment of grief-born rage, destroyed the very thing she treasured. Consumed by what she had done, she cast herself into the sea. The Canaanite gods had mercy on her and turned her into a mermaid. What they did not understand is that grief does not need legs to travel. It moves through water. It moves through blood. It arrives in the ones who come after as a pull they cannot name.

Her children did not know her name. They only knew the depth.

I write because it has been my saving grace. It helped me see survival where I only saw pain. It helped me understand that Kevin, Arslan, has always been worthy. He just needed to trek the desert to find that belief.

In that desert he has met his father, ex-lovers, his mother's wounds, his sister's scarcity. He found his husband sovereign in the sand. He danced with his Mom-mom.

He metabolized a lifetime of pain.

Zahira cast herself into the ocean.

He walked out of it.

For this is not something I need eyes to see, ears to hear. Only a heart to feel.

Comments

Arslan

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