We don’t need to look up to see the sky

(we are alive)

…a sound like the whisper of a thousand wings.

We don’t need to look up to see the sky, because it bends into puddles, gathers quietly in what we step over.

The heavens don’t always hover, sometimes they kneel, spilling golden rays into oil-slick corners, lingering quietly beside our worn shoes.

Funny how it’s easier to bend down than to look up. Like the ground was always a part of us.

And maybe in that is truth: we spent our whole lives gazing upward, searching…when it was God meeting us at ground level all along.

Beauty doesn’t ask for altitude. It waits in broken places, in gutters, where the sun still finds a way to speak to us.

The water mirrors a sky that belongs to all, though only a few pause long enough to see its wisdom. And I, with my spine curled, wait patiently for the day we all gather beneath the same Arsh, unfiltered by grief.

The puddle doesn’t lie. It tells me what is coming: not in fury, but in the quiet promise of balance restored and a Lord who never forgets.

3:169, we used to recite (i+) with faith in the life before, hoping, waiting for His promise to manifest…it was but one dip in Jannah and all the pain and sorrow was gone.

“And do not think of those who have been killed in the way of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving sustenance.”

We are alive, we are not longer numbers. Only infinity. Once, they tried to count us, contain us. But don’t worry. That part of the story is over.

Ris, did my end arrive already?

It was a reverie apocalypse, a soft collapse before the final one, the last day. I lost touch with myself, it didn’t come loud, but in the quiet breaking that happens when you give away your light to those who don’t value its worth. I used to go lengths for people, pleasing some and worshipping others. Forgetting The One. The Only. No more. It was haunting, my soul hollowed out and my heart broke softly. I was left confused with a life built on pretty lies. A promise to not go back to who I was.

Then came the signs, the ones we were afraid of:

One, the years blurred. Weeks collapsed into days, and we kept saying, “Time is flying. Because it was.

Two, cities reached toward the clouds, as if trying to escape the earth. Deserts turned green. The UAE blossomed, as foretold.

Three, truth felt like fiction and lies sat comfortably on everybody’s tongue.

Four, children no longer resembled their parents. Not in faith. Not in speech. Not in love. Homes became unfamiliar, even with the same names at the dinner table.

Five, people became slaves to their desires. Crowds gathered, not for remembrance but for distraction. Concerts became pilgrimages. TV shows, sermons. Egos, golden calves.

And then the major signs started to unfold:

Six, The Anti-Christ appeared, the false messiah, one eye, many followers and with deceits that pulled the faint-hearted closer and closer.

Seven, Gog and Magog. Two tribes unleashed from behind the barrier, held for thousands of years. They swept the earth like wildfire. No fortress stood. No power matched their chaos.

Eight, three major lands sank and then the sun rose from the west, causing the door of repentance to slam shut.

Tomorrow came quicker than regret and then…the trumpet is blown. Blown. Once. Twice. And the final breath of the world exhales into silence.

The first days of life was born of love, with them came Adam peace be upon him and much later, you. So too will the last day arrive, wrapped in that same love. All that burned in Gaza, wept in Ash-sham and wandered without rest, was accounted for in a preserve tablet, fifty thousand years before the construction of the heavens and the earth. A love without end. A love not meant to be understood. A love to be carried forward.

As I stare at the puddles, I could almost see…I could almost feel it: a sound like the whisper of a thousand wings, as families, long separated by time and pain, begin to draw near once more.

“Is this the end?” I ask, but the answer comes in the form of a smile, as radiant as the sun, as pure as the water beneath me. This is not the end, it is the beginning.

So puddle me a story, one that spills from the edges of time, about a place where rivers follow endlessly, rivers that will never know drought. Rivers of water, pure and incorruptible. Rivers of milk, whose tastes never changes. Rivers of purified honey, clear and sweet. Rivers of wine, that do not intoxicate, delicious to those who drink it.

Puddle me a story of the souls who have been patient, who abandoned sleep and comfort in the silence of the night, lifting their prayers into the dark, seeking to draw nearer to the Most Merciful. Waiting for a light they could not yet see, until now it blinds them with its beauty, until now it tore apart the night and folded it into a never ending light.

Puddle me a story of reunions that carry no weight of time. Where the hands that once slipped away now grasp tight and the eyes that once searched in worry now lock in understanding, completely free.

Puddle me a story where the end is not an end, but a turning of pages, a swirling of winds, a softening of hearts.