I have been painting birds for as long as I can remember.
Not just because they are beautiful, though they are.
Not just because they fly, though I’ve often wished to.
But because they carry something wordless that I’ve always tried to understand.
Each bird I paint is like a syllable.
Together, they form the poem I have been writing with my hands across decades.
Sometimes alone, sometimes in flight, sometimes gathered like secrets in a tree.
They are not symbols, not decorations.
They are companions.
Birds have followed me through every stage of my life.
They watched me as a girl in Iran, as a student far from home, as a woman rebuilding, remembering, re-rooting.
They arrived when I was silent.
They stayed when others left.
They carried fragments of my language, of my longing, and scattered them into sky.
In Persian miniature painting, birds often appear in gardens, part of a delicate paradise.
In Sufi poetry, they sing the soul’s yearning.
In my paintings, they do not belong to a place or a rule.
They belong to movement.
To softness.
To persistence.
I don’t always know why I paint them.
But when I do, I feel closer to the part of me that is free, and quietly fierce.
This is the poem I’ve never stopped writing.
It has no final verse.
Only wings.
