It’s just that life can be so beautiful and it can be so painful.

FACES BY FADWA AL QASEM 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 45

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is she black? Is she white? Minority, majority? What is she feeling? What is she thinking? Does it matter to me? Should it? Does she want to hear my story, too?” There’s a lot of beating hearts out there.

You know how when your whole face cries? You know why you’re crying but you don’t always like to admit it, even to yourself. It’s just that life can be so beautiful and it can be so painful.

Sometimes you are blessed and lucky and you cry for others. In the midst of the pain of one atrocity, you can forget there are so many more atrocities happening around the world. And you can forget there is still beauty.

Every day we begin again. But, For some reason we insist on carrying yesterday’s luggage. And the luggage of all the days before. Our back hurts. We cry. Yet we decide it’s more heroic to keep the weight on our shoulders. We dream about flying as our feet sink deeper into the earth and our wings turn to …