Jam Writes

Where feelings meet metaphors and make questionable choices.

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about

A wanderer at heart, an artist by hand and a writer by soul. Hi! I am JAM. This space is my home between homes, where words, art and wonder meet. I write about things that linger. The way stories live in people, the way poetry breathes between the days and how we keep learning what it means to be alive.

  • Ordinary to Extrodinary

    A paintbrush alone
    is just bone and bristle- ordinary,
    wood cut from something that once stood in the sun,
    hair that remembers an animal’s warmth.
    It rests on the table,
    smelling of oil and old water,
    holding yesterday in its stiff mouth.
    In a child’s hand
    it moves like a first drum—
    color spilled without apology,
    palms stained,
    the floor baptized in blue and red.
    In the hands of one who remembers,
    the brush carries weight.
    Not just skill—
    but grandmothers’ patience,
    the calloused fingers of ancestors,
    stories pressed into muscle.
    It drags slowly,
    as if listening to the earth beneath the canvas,
    as if asking permission
    before laying down truth.
    Same brush.
    Different lineage.
    One hand is discovering the world.
    The other is answering it—
    with memory,
    with warmth of the soul,
    with the quiet courage
    of those who painted, carved, cooked,
    and survived before you which Is extrodinary.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • Midday Shoes & Midnight Flowers

    Midday Shoes & Midnight Flowers
    I got fire in my shoes,
    they don’t ever want to run,
    they just sway and shuffle
    under that heavy midday sun.
    Yeah, fire in my shoes,
    they only know how to feel,
    how to dance with what’s burning,
    how to make the ache real.
    I’m a midnight flower,
    don’t bloom too soon, don’t rush the dark,
    I wait for the quiet hours
    when longing leaves its mark.
    Love and loss taste the same,
    when it comes to you,
    sweet on the lips at first,
    then it burns me through and through.
    The house on the hill has a broken door,
    never stayed shut right,
    porch light flickers like it’s tired
    of standing guard all night.
    Footsteps cross the floor slow,
    ghosts who know the way by heart,
    only they know the truth
    of where we fell apart.
    Every prayer’s one breath away,
    curling up in smoke,
    wrapping itself around the moon
    like a promise somebody broke.
    Your shadow stayed
    long after you were gone,
    love keeps slipping through the seams of time
    and I keep holding on.
    You got a voice like velvet,
    but your heart’s a quiet flame,
    eyes soft and dark as midnight,
    never look the same.
    Every dream you touch,
    yeah, I’ve seen them die,
    but not mine, no not mine—
    I still keep mine alive.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • Internal Clutter

    Dove puoi ridurre il disordine nella tua vita?

    Where can I reduce clutter in my life?
    Materially, I live pretty simply.
    No overflowing closets, no unnecessary things.
    My clutter is more… internal.
    It lives in my mind—old thoughts from the past,
    sitting on mental shelves, collecting dust and spiderwebs,
    apparently living rent free and refusing to move out.
    They wait patiently for moments of joy,
    only to pop up like an unwanted notification:
    Careful. Don’t get too happy. Something unfortunate is probably loading.
    This is the clutter I’m working on clearing.
    Not by pretending the past didn’t happen,
    but by reminding it that it no longer runs the building.
    Joy doesn’t need a helmet.
    And not every solid floor is about to fall from underneath my feet.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • Prime Real Estate


    The body is not simply decoration.
    It is of the land.
    Prime real estate passed down
    through bone memory and breath,
    through women who carried fire in their ribs
    and men who listened to the ground before they spoke.
    This body remembers
    even when the mind forgets.
    It knows the language of seasons,
    of hunger and rest,
    of when to move
    and when to stay.
    Every thought that enters
    leaves a footprint.
    Every wound digs a small river.
    Every act of love plants something
    that may not bloom for years.
    We are taught to abandon the body,
    to sell it cheap,
    to let noise, shame, and urgency
    build on sacred land.
    But this body was never empty terrain.
    It is altar and shelter.
    A place where grief sits by the fire
    until it is ready to soften.
    A place where joy drums the earth
    and calls the spirit back home.
    To tend the body
    is to tend the ancestors.
    To rest is not laziness—
    it is listening.
    To say no
    is to protect the borders.
    This land was meant to be inhabited
    with care.
    Not burned.
    Not overrun.
    Not conquered.
    The body is prime real estate
    because Spirit chose it.
    Because life signed its name here with love
    and in this love we are meant to repay in some small way.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • Voltage

    For us creatives, the writers, musicians, artists,
    It’s not about burning.
    It’s about carrying voltage.
    We were never meant
    to be lit endlessly,
    to consume ourselves
    for the comfort of others.
    We were made to pulse—
    bright, then resting,
    bright again—
    like a heart that knows
    when to hold
    and when to release.
    We translate feeling that have no language.
    The unseen ache.
    The holy tension.
    The truth people feel
    before they can name it.
    We hold intensity
    without collapsing,
    stand inside the storm
    without becoming it.
    We are bridges—
    between pain and meaning,
    between silence and sound,
    between what hurts
    and what heals.
    We wake people gently,
    but unmistakably.
    Not with fire that destroys,
    but with light that remembers.
    This is our work.
    Not to burn out—
    but to carry the current
    and let it move through us
    without breaking the vessel.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • The Longest Roadtrip

    Ripensa al tuo viaggio più memorabile.

    My Most Memorable Road Trip
    People talk about road trips like they start with snacks, a playlist, and a destination. Mine started before I knew how to read road signs.
    If I’m honest, my whole life has been a road trip. As a child, I crossed oceans with my mom, moving from Lebanon to America. Then foster care had me packing my life into boxes over and over again—new homes, new states, new rules, same suitcase energy. By the time I became an adult, moving felt less like a disruption and more like muscle memory.
    Adulthood didn’t slow me down much either. I traded NYC for Italy, then somehow found myself traveling across Europe in an RV with friends—proof that chaos and beauty often share the same driver’s seat. And now here I am in Albania, still moving, still learning, still laughing at the idea that my GPS has ever known what it was doing.
    What I’ve learned along the way is this: I no longer long for a place to call home. I don’t need a fixed address to feel rooted. Home isn’t a location—it’s a feeling. It’s where my heart feels steady, where I can exhale, where I’m becoming more myself.
    Turns out, the most memorable road trip wasn’t a single journey at all. It was the life I’ve been living—windows down, heart open, destination optional.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • The Strong Ones: The story of Mrs. Dee McGee


    Mrs. Dee McGee was considered one of those we call the strong ones.
    I say was, because she sadly and suddenly passed,
    from the quiet burden of carrying everyone’s weight
    plus her own.
    Mrs. Dee McGee always did her very best to handle whatever life threw at her
    with as much grace as she could muster.
    Some days, she would cry alone in her room—
    the kind of crying that leaves no sound,
    only a heaviness behind the eyes—
    and then she would wash her face, straighten her back,
    and step back into the world
    still willing to lend an ear to listen
    and a shoulder to cry on.
    People admired her for this.
    They said things like,
    “She’s so strong.”
    “She always knows what to say.”
    “She’s got it together.”
    What they did not say—
    what they did not ask—
    was who listened to Mrs. Dee McGee
    when the door was closed
    and the room was quiet.
    Life, as it tends to do, did not throw its misfortunes all at once.
    It preferred a slower method.
    A series of small disappointments.
    Unreturned calls.
    Responsibilities that multiplied without asking permission.
    Losses that were never quite big enough
    to justify falling apart publicly.
    And so Mrs. Dee McGee did not fall apart.
    She adjusted.
    She made room.
    She carried more.
    She told herself, Just get through today.
    When others stumbled, she steadied them.
    When others broke, she held the pieces.
    And when someone finally asked how she was doing,
    she smiled politely and said,
    “I’m okay.”
    This answer was accepted immediately,
    for it matched what everyone already believed.
    You see, the strong ones are often trusted too much—
    trusted to survive,
    trusted to endure,
    trusted not to need.
    No one noticed that her laughter came a little later than it used to.
    That her eyes lingered longer on nothing.
    That her strength, once a flame,
    had become a wick burning lower and lower.
    And then one day,
    Mrs. Dee McGee was gone.
    People were shocked.
    They said,
    “I never would have guessed.”
    “She didn’t seem like she was struggling.”
    “She was always so strong.”
    What they meant was:
    She never asked us to see her.


    Moral
    Strength should never require invisibility.
    Check on the ones who carry everyone.
    Listen past the smile.
    And if you are one of the strong ones—
    remember:
    you are allowed to set the weight down
    before it breaks you.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • AN ode to my mom: A woman ahead of her time

    After reading a poem by B.B. Grey about his late father, I found myself thinking deeply about my own mother and how much of who I am was shaped by her story.
    My mom lived a difficult life. She was in a relationship with a narcissistic, abusive man who, when she tried to leave, had her committed to a mental institution. I was very young, but I remember her trying to protect me, the tension in our home, and the fights. I remember the last time I saw her as a child—being driven away in the back seat of a social worker’s car, watching her stand in the road waving until she became a blur through my tears and the distance between us.
    She was an artist. She loved to sing on stage, play her guitar, and create. I realize now how much of that lives in me. Art was her refuge, her truth, and her way of surviving.
    Years later, I found her again. We spoke on the phone, reconnecting after so much time. She told me she was a lesbian and no longer dated men—something that took courage, especially where she lived and during that time. Even then, I could feel her strength. She was still painting, still singing, still playing her guitar, and she had found love with someone who truly appreciated her.
    She passed away a year later. She had struggled with alcoholism and had picked up the bottle again. Her partner came home from a business trip and found her alone in her apartment. The loss came quickly, just as I was beginning to know her again.
    My mother was ahead of her time, as many artists are. She left behind a legacy of resilience, creativity, and courage. I miss her back scratches and our talks—mostly, I just miss her.
    She taught me about our ancestors and our way of life on the reservation. I carry those lessons with me still. Wherever she is now, I hope she knows I hold her story close to my heart and that, in some way, I make her—and our ancestors—proud.

    She was ahead of her time, and I am still catching up to her courage.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Live&Light

  • Only Truth

    She walked fiercely, not to be noticed but because the ground beneath her deserved conviction. Grey hair kissed with pastel pink caught the winter light like a quiet rebellion. Electric green boots announced each step without apology. A purple fur jacket held the cold at bay, and red lipstick—bold, deliberate—rested on her lips like a promise she had already kept to herself.
    This is a land where blending in is safer, where softness is often mistaken for weakness and difference is quietly discouraged. And still, she crossed the street as if the world had been waiting for her arrival.
    Beside her walked a man whose pride was not loud, but rooted. Not possessive. Not performative. The kind that comes from witnessing someone fully inhabit themselves and choosing to walk alongside them anyway. She was not his accessory, nor was he hers. No shrinking. No eclipsing. Just two distinct souls, interwoven by choice, not need.
    They carried no illusion of perfection—only presence. A shared understanding that love does not demand sameness, only truth. And in that brief crossing, between one side of the street and the other, they proved something quietly radical: that being wholly yourself, and being deeply connected, can exist at the same time—and that, for them, was more than enough.

    JAM🙏🏻❤️‍🔥Love&Light

  • The in- between

    When inspiration does not arrive
    and motivation left weeks ago,
    the heart grows heavy,
    the body remembers every mile.


    Who you were is gone.
    Who you are is not yet finished.
    You stand in the in-between—
    barefoot, learning new ground.


    There was a time
    when a bottle could drown the ache,
    when numbness passed for healing.
    That magic died years ago.


    Now you write.
    Now you pray.
    Still, the weight returns like tidewater,
    touching the shore of your chest
    again and again.


    Tears fall while dishes are washed,
    while life insists on being lived.
    Old voices rise—
    from mouths that never loved you
    or themselves—
    telling you that you were never enough.
    Not then.
    Not now.
    And still, you go on.


    You give grace to strangers.
    You make peace with storms inside you
    in ways no one taught you—
    new ways.
    Your ways.


    They say you should move faster,
    move cleaner,
    move differently.
    But forward is forward,
    even when it limps.


    Flowers grow in polluted soil,
    roots tangled in what tried to poison them,
    reaching anyway
    for the honest warmth of the sun.
    Only you can grow like this.


    Only you can rise in this shape.
    And nothing—
    not their voices,
    not your past,
    not the weight of the in-between —
    can take that away.

    JAM ❤️‍🔥🙏🏻Love&Light

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