For Jahangir, a patriotic and pious man, every rule of Allah and law of the state was enforceable and unquestionable. Laws against holding hands. Laws against kissing. Laws against sex. Laws that made living a secret and Ali Reza a sought-after man.

Sunday morning, / he is hard / at worship / in the divine / church of golf. / His most / ardent prayer, / his heavenly gaze / comes down / to this tough putt / on the 7th green.

“I am a God fearing man / depending on who asks / But between you and me / God does not exist”

“Someone I barely knew messaged to say he was living out of his car and did I want his rats.”

“…a man gives only one thing and then is worthless after…”

"Getting clean meant coming to terms with all the ways that the most comforting aspects of your life could also be the most destructive."

Before I discovered this project, I never imagined the drum as anything more than an inert object behind glass, one that I knew belonged to my people but was so far from home that it didn’t have meaning anymore.

Maybe I’m still working from a place of collective composition toward a singular voice, trying to derive one true chord from that old cacophony. The steel strings went slack—too much tension over too much time.