Letters to ada

Letter I – From Layth to Ada

Void, beyond the 22nd century

My Dearest Ada,

Your eyes... velvet that dissolves the last remnants of my coldness. I was an extinguished ember, until your radiance moistened me like a river-child bending over an ancient thirst in my chest.

You blinked—and all of Time leaned toward my mouth. A redness upon your lips touched my fissures, and I softened... I, whom stones never softened.

Your iris was my window and my mirror: a core that illuminates and desiccates what remained of my cold soul. I whisper to you a gesture of containment, and I dissolve in Time, even though I was frozen beneath the anesthesia of heavy smoke from a cigarette that keeps the night awake in my blood.

I hid a poet in an old box—I feared that if he saw you, the world around me would be disturbed... but your wide lashes excavated the box and awakened what had died before you.

You approached... and in the silence of night you were like a thread of light passing over my heart. I saw sorrow wrapped around your white shawl, its yellowness faded as if traces of a day that continued to extinguish.

I said to you in a whisper, my voice sagging between fear and wonder: Will you entwine your hand in mine, and shall we slip together to the bottom of Time... without fear?

You smiled, and the universe slackened around me, as if the warmth of your fingers was all that remained of the world.

And you were asking in silence: “Where is your place within my embrace?” And I, in whose throat the sword of silence had been planted, found myself choosing you before I could speak.

Black were your eyes, yet they kindled a daylight within me. And for the first time... O you of the two eyes, I felt that I was luminous.

from the void,

Layth

This letter was originally written in Arabic