You sit on your porch swing, miles away
Making shapes out of streetlights
Dancing in the dark
Looking for remnants of a red sun
Chasing after silver moonlight
A pen in your hand
Poetry on your tongue
But the wind catches sight of you,
Carrying the words away  
And everything remains unspoken

You soak your sun-dried dreams in rose water
And bead them onto strings of premature promises
You once made to your naïve self,
Despite your love for dreaming
The summer moon’s quick departure
Leaves you stranded at train stations
And you make your way back through fields
Of distant memories
Looking for ways to fall asleep

You stand at a crossroads
unsure of where to step
the night is too dark
The day is always accompanied by fog
at a street corner marked by time
Where moonlight collides with your midnight blues

Honey drops in to the Milky Way inside your tea cup
We sit chatting for old times sake
Friends of distance and enemies of uncertainty
I hope you’ve paved your road on those maps
That you pinned onto your walls
I hope the sun didn’t chase you away
I hope the foreign thunder stole your heart
And you found reflections of a beautiful past
I had written the night before
Inked into letters from the moon

From across the ocean, I waited for your postcards
Yet we sit here, with our thoughts
dancing in the silence between us
Your spoon makes ripples in your tea,
I dream to see the world you’ve seen,

You reminisce and I travel with your memories

You write letters with your broken pen
after waking up from a dream
undisturbed, among peonies soaked in water
your feet rest against the sand
that once kissed the moon
and the stars write back to you
transcripts of our conversations,
like fragrance, they leave a trail in the wind
and we remember them
on those odd nights of wakeful dreaming

The home we built was up in flames
but the cold air could not touch us

Our fences were broken by the wind
but we were once again face to face

I call out to you.
And the solemness in your broken irises
I call out to the dust on your hands
That sparkles when your tears fall onto them
How many battles have you fought?
How many times did you run from the rain?
Only to let the wind catch your hair
Like the kites above Kabul streets
How many hopeless dreams turned into nightmares?
Where heartbeats turned into the unspeakable silence
That follows the crushing of the world
Beautiful girl, you bleed out.
And I wonder how I can stop the bleeding
But my bandages can’t wrap your wounds
For they run deeper than the ground
And your child-like laughter
Filled with more life than any man
Echoes in the streets of Kabul
I call out to you
And I hear your silence
As it deafens the world