Poetry

Most days I wish I had never met you ‘cause then maybe I could sleep at night. I didn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there’s someone like you out there.

Our chapter was only three pages, was it?
In those pages, I felt like I won and that there is some loss in that win.
Even my smile made me wonder in pain.
My breath got stuck in restlessness.
And the end of our story made me finally breathe.
I'm left wondering where the fire was in?
Maybe it was just an imagination

They said things about me that were never true, and somehow I became the one who had to live with them.

Years have passed, but the story remains, a shadow following me through places I never thought it would reach.

I kept waiting for the truth to be spoken.

For someone to say, “No. That's not what happened.”

But no one did.

And perhaps that is what hurts the most.

Not the lie itself, but the silence of those who knew the truth and still let me carry it.

I wonder sometimes how a person can sleep at night knowing they left someone else to bear the weight of their own mistakes.

I was never asking for the world to love me.

I only wanted my name back.

The name I had before people turned someone else's story into my identity.

I am tired of remembering something I never did.

Tired of feeling the ache of a wound that refuses to close because no one ever admitted they caused it.

But perhaps one day I will stop waiting for an apology that may never come.

Perhaps one day I will understand that the truth does not become a lie just because it was buried.

And maybe, after all these years, I can finally put down the weight of a story that was never mine.

They may have left my name in the dirt.

But I know I did not put it there.

And I know I don't have to spend the rest of my life trying to prove it.

Tree leaves

Tree
leaves—
green,
yellow,
red:
heals,
mellows
stress.
Beats any
hurt,
treats many:
hers.

There’s a cruel thing about beauty. It reveals absence. By the time you notice the light, your heart has already turned to see who isn’t there..

"I still believe that destiny knows my address." 🌙

Knowing me and knowing about me are two completely different things.

The ascetic spent his life longing for Paradise,
Never realizing that Paradise lies in letting go of longing itself.🪽

Ṣā’eb Tabrizi

I may not see you again but I’ll feel you for the rest of my life.

The Dervish Beneath the Crown

He learned from night what daylight never shows,
Each crown is fed by roots no garden knows.
The world saw fire gathering in his eyes,
But not the grave where every softness lies.

He answered doors until he heard the wall,
Then traced the hidden hand behind them all.
The same hands once commanded where to stand
Now move whole kingdoms quietly across the sand.

He keeps two distant heavens in his sight,
One dressed in snow, one crowned with southern light.
Yet every road his restless footsteps roam
Still turns toward one direction when he bows alone.

He stitched his wounds with verses and with prayer,
Then wore them like a fragrance in the air.
No blade could find the heart beneath his chest,
He buried it where only God could guess.

Once, spring had promised shelter in his room,
A second shadow, jasmine in full bloom.
But dawn arrived and found one cup grown cold,
Some separations are too sacred to be told.

He did not curse the one who chose to leave,
For dervishes are taught to burn, not grieve.
He only asked the flame, before it died,
Why those who become qiblahs seldom stay beside.

The flame replied, You mistook love for rest,
The Friend breaks every idol in the chest.
How will you reach the One beyond all name
While guarding smaller gods inside your frame?

So he surrendered everything but thirst,
And let the hidden poison do its worst.
He died a thousand deaths without a grave,
For fana claims the things that men would save.

They call him proud because he walks like stone,
Unaware how often pride has been overthrown.
They see a man preparing for a throne;
They do not see the faqir who sleeps alone.

They call it greed when towers haunt his eyes,
As though all hunger ends where fortune lies.
They never saw the roofs that could not hold the rain,
Or how a child turns poverty into private pain.

He wants no gold to decorate his name,
But gold enough to put old storms to shame.
Some men seek wealth so servants know their face;
Some seek it so their loved ones never beg for space.

By day, he bargains calmly with his fate,
By night, he questions every bolted gate.
He does not knock, he studies lock and key,
Then builds another door where none could be.

The world will one day kneel before his rise
And call it luck, for language often lies.
They will praise the crown, the city and the flame,
Yet never know the ashes knew his name.

And when they ask what power made him whole,
He will not show the ruins of his soul.
He will smile like a man whom darkness could not save
While the dervish inside him whispers, I never left the grave.