We’re used to thinking of writers as storytellers of others’ lives — but some dedicate themselves to documenting what often goes unspoken. My name is Salima, and I call myself a documentarian of shy truths. I create stories that feel like rituals: novels, performances, and poems that ask what it means to be fully alive. For me, beauty is a form of truth-telling, and art is the way we remember what we’ve always known.

As I move through the world, I collect silence and stories, always drawn to the invisible threads that bind us. My work moves across genres — literature, performance, poetry, and film — yet it is always guided by a single question: how do we touch what cannot be seen, but only felt?

There are loves that don’t end with absence. They stay in the body, in the way a song lingers after the music has stopped. Or a tan burns after the sun is down. When I wrote this poem, I was thinking about how grief can weigh us down so heavily that we forget the joy that once filled us. And yet, sometimes all it takes is remembering for that joy to return.

This piece is my attempt to speak to someone I loved and lost, but also to anyone who has lost and kept living. It’s a reminder that mourning has its place, but so does movement, so does dancing, so does climbing again. To love deeply is to grieve, but to grieve deeply is also to discover new ways of loving.

If you truly believe in resurrection,
remember our togetherness.
Ah (!) the joy we were blessed with
could flood the world
and drown its every sorrow.

If the loss grows so heavy
you begin to lose yourself,
just dance to this song,
and I’ll be there.

But my dear lover,
enough of mourning.

Go, 

Go,

Go climb another mountain.