Through the Night

I chanted for years, for you to exist, return, ensue, emerge, and to let me hold you. Then sudden as a sandstorm, you arrived, erupted in my soul, and left. I wake up, shivering in the cold and cry. Like the ocean waves I want to crown your name on the rocks, like the wind to crawl around the mountains and engrave them with your image, and write you out of these countless scars, out of my heart. I reached out my hands to you, to touch you, and in return I found my fists full of a pitch-black moon, hallowed like those sitting under the eyes of my words. I ran my fingers through my hair, my heart through the night, and my shadow from you. In Baha’u’llah's words, to the true lover reunion is life, and separation is death. Now you arrive and vanish; to me this is a nightmare. Unlike you, I believe we are gifted with a heart to love and not just to love a few selected. You regard life differently. I am not livid, not even mired by the turn of the events. I accepted this long ago. This is how you are, your remedy for a grave heart. It is our fate that insists to bid farewell at each greeting.

The worldly hope men set their hearts upon
Turns ashes-or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the desert's dusty face,
Lighting a little hour or two-is gone.

-- Omar Khayyam

I turn off the lights.