Letter I — Love as an Enchanted Homeland

Letter I – From Layth to Aida

The Void, beyond the 22nd century

To the velvet-hearted, Aida,

I offer you an empty poem,

perhaps it might ease

the weight of separation's days.

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 black 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.

Black were your eyes,

black

like the first dawn

before its emergence.

You do not cease

biting your lips,

until it seemed to me

that every kiss

not yet spoken

calls my name.

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 triple-extinguished

daylight.

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 lashes,

yet they

kindled

a daylight

within me.

And for the first time...

O you of the black lashes,

I felt

that I

was luminous.

On this night

I took up the pen

and wrote to you

one of my daily occupations:

thinking.

But what consumed

a measure of my precious time

was

longing.

In the geography of longing,

there is no place for reason,

or perhaps reason

does not accept it as logic,

so it reshapes it

within the human psyche.

Yet it

has always remained

a feeling

and a sensing,

belonging to

the maps of the soul

that reason

usually overlooks.

There are regions

that cannot be measured

or bounded,

not built from earth,

but nourished

by the first tremor

of a constricted feeling.

And in our case,

we speak of longing

when you swallow

the price of distance,

or separation,

or attachment,

whether they were

events that passed,

or imaginings

submitted to,

in which I found

a pearl

for it.

There,

love is not possession,

but a soft rebellion,

a refusal

for feeling to transform

into a shackle,

or a door

that closes.

The lover here

is neither hero

nor victim;

he is one who saw his exile

and chose it.

As for the path of homeland,

it has always been there,

yet he

refused to dwell in it

again

and again.

That prison

we call refuge:

to love

what cannot be attained.

To build your own walls,

brick by brick of memory,

and mortar

of restless

imagination,

so the walls rise

while you look upon them

with the eyes

of one who does not realize

they are no longer a prison,

but

a temple

of absence.

It has a lock from within,

and a key

in your core,

and a wound

in the heart.

Is it a trace

that does not fade?

Intuitively,

my question:

Have you encountered it

before?

She is not a person,

but a trace

of long shadow,

like a microtone

appearing

between the intervals of melodies,

in the silence

that follows laughter,

in the warm emptiness

upon a pillow

that has not known her head.

He sees her

in things

life does not notice:

the steam of coffee,

a passing footstep,

the scent of oud

without peer.

And when she is present,

time slows

in reverence,

and when she is absent,

time collapses

all at once.

He had another time,

not measured in minutes,

but by a heartbeat

that clung

to a passing

wave.

As for absence,

it is the alchemy of emotions,

a filtration

of feeling.

Her absence

is not a lack,

but the raw material

of meaning;

from it is born

the speech that is not spoken,

the letters that are not sent,

and the poems

that are written

then burned

so as not to betray

their truth.

Perhaps her absence

was necessary,

or because he

chose

not to be absent?

Imagine

that you passed by her side

one day,

and she was holding another's hand,

would you have broken?

Is that not so?

There is no use

in breaking;

for her happiness

will not take

anything from you.

He asked for no promises,

nor an ending.

He learned to love

as one loves

silent prayers:

without waiting

for an answer.

Perhaps

you have not yet taken refuge

in the museum of silence.

Every word

left unspoken

transforms

into a weight

in the chest.

As for a word

like "I love you,"

it remains

lodged in the throat,

not from inability,

but out of respect

for its fragility.

How much he makes

of his silence

an art:

texts

that are not read,

songs

that whisper to the night alone,

or exhibitions

visited by no one

but him.

Did he write

to understand?

I think not.

He does not love

to be rewarded,

he does this

to remain a soul,

and to complete

his humanity

in the face of reality.

Likewise,

absurdity has its share

of the equation,

and it is a sacred

authority.

Others

call this love

a loss,

because they

lost a lover

who stripped them

of love's taste.

And some

see it

as a lifeline,

despising it

perhaps

out of hatred

for another salvation.

As for him,

it was

a passing act,

a smile

to the past,

it passed sweetly

and bitterly,

yet he

did not let it

harden him

against himself.

As for our loving candle,

at its end

it burns,

not to illuminate,

but

to testify:

I was here,

I felt,

I loved

more

than reason

permits.

The wax melts

at his feet,

a fragile monument

to his beautiful

stubbornness.

But in this

impossible love,

he was not

capable of being possessed,

his soul

was his own,

and he

its sole

owner.

It was not an experience,

but a pulse of feeling,

destined

to exist

in its time,

and to be lived,

and to fade,

and to be remembered,

and to be forgotten,

as if longing

by its nature

will

pass.

This letter was first imagined in Arabic.

What you are reading is not a translation, but a parallel original by the same author.

Her name is Aida — “the one who returns.”