A Trick By The Angels

Heartbreak too was a blessing in disguise,
As beautiful as one,
I couldn’t have imagined for myself.
A trick by the angels,
Impelling me to find worlds,
I would not have otherwise known.

by Shenaz Wahid

17

I wrote these words at twenty-two when I exprerienced my first hearbreak.
There was beauty in that loss retrospectively because it cracked me open deeper to myself and my dreams.
May we find the beauty in our every wound.
May our wounds shine, in time.

In The Land Without Words

You and I,
we meet better,
in the land without words.
Where love stirs and shakes,
the inner chambers,
of our human soul.

By SHENAZ WAHID

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Sometimes, a human being can have an incredible impact on us without knowing.
This poem is about sweet moments, shared in unworded silent longing and love.

The Angels and the omens

I know without doubt that Angels are real.

As we’re both speaking of Angels tonight,
I begin to say that prayer to my guardian Angel written down in the Bible,
but he completes it before I can……
“Angel of God, my guardian dear,
His love has committed me, to your care,
Ever this day be at my side,
To light and guard, to rule and guide.”

My 18yr old cousin who I’m meeting after almost 3years goes on to say, “I use to say that prayer in the 2nd grade and I haven’t said it in so long.”

After they finish reading their Namaz, every Muslim turns to the right and then to the left, to greet their Angels. In the Holy Quran, the Holy Bible and other scriptures, Angels and Archangels are written about as very real forces of life,
but not everyone calls out to them.

After reading about them for the very first time, I light a small-white candle and call out to them on the candle-stand I’d taken from Nana’s attic, I open my eyes slowly to find that grandpa Philip’s old rusted candle-stand is an Angel with wings as if to tell me teasingly, “We’ve always been here, you just haven’t noticed!”

That same book said, “It’s the simplest thing to call out to them, they’ve just been waiting for you all your life. Let your prayer to them be a simple one.
Lead me in all matters of my life, for my highest good. Give me a sign that I can understand that you are here.” It went on to say that Angels are God’s creatures that can’t be commanded for a sign, you have to ask with love!
not something quite like, “hey Angels if you’re real make me fly!”
And then it said that although it wasn’t the rule, one of the common signs was finding pennies in unexpected places, someplace you really don’t expect to see them like your bathroom or your porch! That same day my eyes darted around and well….. nothing, no pennies or anything!

So I stepped out that evening to meet my best-friend for coffee and after some time she pulls out a book from her bag that she opens first and flips around, saying “Someone gifted me this interesting book on Angels.”
“Can I see that?”, I ask her
I open it and a penny falls on my lap from the book of Angels!
I literally jump on her and she has no idea why I’m doing this inquiring,
“Where’d that coin come from?”
That penny is now wrapped in a purple ribbon around grandpa’s old candle-stand so that I never forget they are here!
If you believe in Angels, then they’ll be right by your side.
God loves us so much, to the extent that he made for each one of us creatures of heaven, called guardian Angels to lead us to our highest good! Your highest good is simply that which, will in the end bring you true joy and love. There are paths I’ve chosen that I thought were excellent choices at the time I made them, but nothing made me feel more miserable. The Angels see far beyond what we can, all that’s invisible in the future and all that’s asleep dreaming within our soul. Asking them to show the way, is walking toward love and joy.
After all they come from the one who made us.

The day before I meet my cousin, I asked God and my guardian Angel,
“This stranger I met ‘xyz’ feels so important to me. I don’t know why and all of this just seems so ridiculous. Give me a sign, an omen that I can understand if this person is really that important to my life.”
So the next day, Jovin who hasn’t met me in three whole years, barges in inquiring about this stranger. There are so many things he could ask me first, after all this time, but it’s the very first thing he says.
I hug him for bringing me my Omen and I know that my Angels will lead that stranger, to read the words I now write.

Wait there’s more…. the day after that, my cousin’s dad, my uncle in Bahrain whom I haven’t seen in eons, who has no clue about our conversation and who sends me an email once a year, just to wish me for my birthday or Christmas or new year, sends me a message that midst all the things my heart needs to hear in this moment, says, “There are Angels all around you!”
……………..

by SHENAZ WAHID

To God

God,
Thank you for giving me birth in a world full of beauty and full of agony.
One that only you understand, why you made it so.

Thank you for Love, and for the pain of hatred that teaches me Love’s worth.
Thank you for the sweetness of solitude, for the joy of company and for the aching loneliness that allows me to treasure both.

Thank you for the butterflies, mountains, fishes, oceans and trees.
Thank you for the friends I lost, ones I found and for those who stay through it all.
Thank you for the love I lost. Thank you for the love I found.
Thank you for those who come from nowhere, light a fire in my soul and change me forever in ways I couldn’t have done without them.
Thank you for those who make my heart cry without tears.

Thank you for my Angels and thank you for keeping me safe from the devils in my own mind.
Thank you for the moments of magic that turned into despair, and for the moments of despair that turned into magic.

Thank you for music and dance and for the deliciousness of silence. Thank you for the silence even when its loud.
Thank you for the joyous laughter. Thank you for the bitter tears.
Thank you for the sun and the moon. Thank you for the dark sky.
Thank you for light and thank you for the darkness, that gives the stars and moon a place to show themself.

Thank you for the moments I know myself, for those where I feel lost, and have a chance to find and be found.
Thank you for remembering me and thank you for forgetting all that I too must forget.

Thank you for those who understand who I am, for those who misunderstand and for those who couldn’t care less.
Thank you for all that I understand, and all that is far beyond me
in beauteous mystery’s womb.

Thank you for wisdom and insight and for my mistakes and folly.
Thank you for the nights of peace, and thank you for the restless sleepless nights.
Thank you for the mountains triumph. Thank you for failures abyss.
Thank you for the blessings, and for all that my foolish heart deemed as a curse.

Thank you for all that’s deep and for all that’s shallow in me, that needs digging.
Thank you for a mind that wants to turn moments into a story,
sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightful.
Thank you for words, without which I couldn’t tell any story.

Oh Thank you Dear God for the Dreams in my soul, for putting them there and thank you for all that is good and bad
that I will have to encounter along my journey’s length.
Thank you for what I know, for what I don’t, for what I will and for what I won’t.

Oh Thank you for People, both happy and sad as they make me. The ones who amaze and inspire, and the ones who hurt and confuse.
Thank you for keeping me company even when I don’t ask you to, and for never forsaking me even when I have myself
Thank you for all that has gone past me by, for now and for all that will be.

Thank you for magic and mystery, for revealing and hiding.
For all the funny contradictions of Life, the ecstasy and agony
one without which I wouldn’t know the other.

Thank you above all for LOVE
Thank you being a God of Love.

Thank you for it ALL.
Yours,
Shenaz

by SHENAZ WAHID