Zahra Deljoui’s ‘Dreamt I Kissed Her’ is about the first time you feel it. Not crush. Not curiosity. The real thing. That dizzy, body-warm knowing. When you’re too young to say it out loud, but your whole nervous system is already lit up. “Dreamt I kissed her / head in the clouds / we were only eleven / how could this be wrong?” It’s not just a dream. It’s the moment she started to understand herself—and the moment the world taught her to hide it. The tension in that lyric stays with you because maybe it happened in sleep, maybe it happened in secret, or maybe it happened and she never told anyone. But it left a mark. It shaped everything that came after.
That lyric cracked something open in me. Because when you grow up different—queer, neurodivergent, nonconforming-you don’t get a clean, easy coming-of-age. You get tension. You get questions with no one safe to ask. You get the kind of ache that lives in your chest for years before it has a name. This isn’t a Pride anthem built for the algorithm. This is a real girl’s story. Honest, fractured, beautiful in its awkwardness.
Advertisement
She opens soft—“I remember when / I was just a kid / all alone in my head”—and it’s immediate. That loneliness doesn’t build; it’s there from the first note. That feeling of growing up not just different, but disconnected from yourself and second-guessing every thought before it forms. “Should I question it? / Should I fight it?” That’s what no one tells you about being queer and young—it isn’t just fear of being seen. It’s the fear of seeing yourself too clearly. So you bury it. You call it a phase. You call it friendship. You pray it passes. You pretend it doesn’t hurt.
The production stays close. Her voice isn’t loud, but it’s steady, like she’s reclaiming her volume note by note. “Now I’m out / I’m never going back / to that frightened little girl.” It’s not a dramatic moment. It’s quiet. And that’s what makes it hit. She’s not asking for applause. She’s just done living in the dark.
Zahra’s British-Iranian identity carries its weight—expectations, surveillance, and silence. Add autism, and the pressure to conform only deepens. But she’s never tried to blend in. Her work isn’t shaped for mass appeal. It’s made for people like her—for anyone who’s ever had to fight just to recognize themselves. “Pink Moon” was vulnerable in a different way, turning her diagnosis into clarity. “Love is Love” carried its own boldness. But Dreamt I Kissed Her doesn’t aim to empower. It seeks to remember. There’s no costume here—no safe dancefloor fantasy. Just a real girl, frozen in time, never kissed, never claimed.
“If only I had known that as a child / we might have been together.” That line isn’t about the one who got away. It’s about the years stolen by shame. The childhood she couldn’t live. The version of herself she kept locked up just to stay loved, or safe, or invisible. That lyric aches and it haunts.
Advertisement
The second verse softens everything. “I see her / I feel her / like I never did.” She’s not speaking to someone else anymore. She’s finally facing herself. The younger version. The hidden one. The one she ran from. And this time, she doesn’t run. “I’ve held her / and healed her.” This is where the love story turns inward. Where healing becomes touch. Where intimacy isn’t romantic—it’s survival.
By the time she hits that final chorus—“Now I’m out / I’m never giving up / on that frightened little girl”—it’s not a declaration. It’s a promise. And this time, she means it.
She isn’t branding herself or applying a rainbow Insta filter. Just Zahra, the memory of a kiss, and the silence that followed. And when she sings through it—gently, honestly—you carry her truth with you.
