sister-hood is an award-winning digital magazine spotlighting the diverse voices of women of Muslim heritage.
sister-hood is a digital magazine and a series of live events. We create platforms for women of Muslim heritage to speak for themselves, rather than being spoken for or spoken about. sister-hood challenges stereotypes and promotes the fearless, progressive, creative voices of women of Muslim heritage.
sister-hood is currently on hiatus whilst we work on our relaunch. The site will still be available for your reading pleasure.
We'd like to thank all of our readers and contributors for their support over the years and look forward to coming back bigger, better and stronger.
Sign up to our mailing list for all future updates here.
For women with whom nothing is ever easy
Nothing is ever easy with me –
Not a thing I won’t question
Not a rule I won’t resist
Not a poem I won’t write
Not a book I won’t read
Not a person I won’t love
Not a place I won’t go
Not a moment I won’t feel.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
For I am that fierce, flawed wind
that blows you into translucent dust.
For I am that raging, gorgeous wave
that pulls your rotting city down under.
For I am that radiant, raving sunlight
that makes your world go white,
that makes you wish for flight.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
I am the quiescent, careful voice so still
somewhere in your mind,
suddenly booming and unbreakable.
I am the fleeting flutter of your heart,
suddenly so feisty that it threatens to be free.
I am the longing of your unlived loins,
so vital and voracious that you may
finally know the contours of your body.
I am the bird who slept, quiet and alive
pausing for just a moment, to rest, in the nook
of your curved and careless arm.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
Because I dream of days that will never happen here,
Because I crave caresses that you can never know,
Because I imagine a touch that takes far too much for you to give,
Because I ache for a home that you don’t have the nerve to build,
Because I am looking for kindle, and you are but a weak and wanting breeze.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
And to love me, is to unlove so much
To unlearn so much, to undo, undress, unravel so much
To love me is to embody you, so utterly that it hurts
To love me is to see you, in all your hypocrisy and pain
To love me is to be somewhere else, to be so deep that you are stranded,
anonymous, far from all you thought, far from all you felt.
To love me is to let go of you, to relieve yourself of you, to free yourself of you
to erase your map, to burn your breath, to bite your tongue, to give what’s good, to crawl from your cave, to flower from beneath your dirt, to reach shamelessly for the sun, to be naked and new for the moon, to lose you, and leave yourself behind.
To love me is to love when it all falls apart,
because nothing lasts, nothing endures
and just as I paint your plain canvas bold and bright, just as I make your little garden
enormous, wild and wise and ferocious and free – just as you reach your highest, holiest high, just as things are sweet and sacred and stunning – things fall apart,
things shatter and shake, the water breaks, the earth shifts, things fall apart.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
I make you so raw, that repression won’t work after this
I make you so fragile, that forgetting won’t be forever
I got you so exposed, that no amount of meek modesty will take you back.
Nothing is ever easy with me –
for as long as you seek truth,
for as long as you need justice,
for as long as you want to live free,
Nothing is ever easy.
Ameera
Ameera