I Live in the Do-Bye

I live in the do-bye

A place where I'm expected to do, then say the bye

And somewhere between the do and the bye

I feel the concrete walls of these tall buildings closing in on me

I feel claustrophobic, choked by their shadows that loom larger than life

If humans mirror their environments, mine shatters before I can even look at it

I race towards the highway; I race my own thoughts to escape my reality

One that is marked by displacement, exile, and a longing for a place I once called my home

Beirut, where I can do without the looming fate of the bye

Until it came crawling one wretched October night, and held all the dreamers and the revolutionaries hostage

And when they tried to do, to save it before it destroys itself

It did not say the bye, it refused to let them go

Instead, it kept love bombing them

Like a toxic lover, urging them to stay but forcing them to leave

And so I left

I live in the do-bye now

And if you open your eyes, you'll see that the do-bye is not limited to one geographical space

It is a global epidemic

It colonizes your being, and pins you to a cog in the system

In the do-bye I sold my soul to a corporate life that haunts my values, and to the headline epidemic that dominates my mornings and my nights

I feel hopeless, screaming from the bottom of my lungs for a reality that once could have been but never was

Yearning for the Levant

For Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria

In the do-bye, I suffer from Stockholm syndrome

Thank you, thank you to the do-bye for saving me

Little do you know that you also silence me

I am trying to see in shades of color again

I am trying so hard to see in art

But your highways disorient me

And your skyscrapers block the view

I am in search for the greater meaning

My old lover sent me a message last night

"I hope you never lose faith in the resistance Tala," he said

"Continue to wake up every day and fight," he said

I told him that resistance is at the core of my being

And it will take on different shapes and sizes

I will not let the do-bye tame this spirit

I want to escape its highways and take solace in the streets that made me

Resistance was born one hopeful October night in Beirut

And it plagues my stomach

It burns my gut like acid and rips my belly like shards of glass

And yet, never have I felt more alive

And when the do-bye suffocates me

Its people breathe new life

A purpose, a reason to renew the fight

Some days I see color

I see the future, one in which we all go back

I will return to my homeland, we all will

We will no longer have to do-bye

We will no longer be another number

Instead, in number we will find our power

The power to do

To do, without having to say the bye

To do, and with every word, every chant and every breath

Birth a revolution

Love exists in the collective

We will hold hands and break down borders with the same dance they choreographed

To do is to protest and to resist

To do is to love as a the purest form of rebellion

Before it declares it is done with me, I will be free from the do-bye

Without owing it a thank you for saving me when I had no home

Because it did not save me

It needs me

It needs every one of us

But it does not recognize it yet

And before it does

We will all say the bye

And never look back