The passing of people is a wound,
but the passing of trust is a death.
When people go,
they leave their shadows in the rooms of memory.
When trust goes,
it steals the light from those shadows,
and sets fire to the bridges
that could have carried them home.
Trust, once broken,
is a mirror in ruins
even if you mend it,
the crack still hides in the glass,
waiting in your reflection.

Forgive the rough edge of my words
they were born in the heat of a breaking heart.
I don’t need you to tell me it’s done;
I’ve seen the cracks widening,
heard the silence growing louder than our laughter.
The fire has been dimming for a long while,
the touch between us turning to stone,
the moments of wild devotion
fading like old paint in the rain.
Now I wear the emptiness like a badge,
my hands remembering
what they can no longer hold,
my body locked in rust,
my soul aching for the ways you once
turned me into a living flame.
And I miss you
not only your mouth,
but the magic it spoke
in the language only lovers know.

While your soul writhes in unrest.
Cursed be he who walks away,
forgetting the bond, never once looking back.
Should he return, trust him not
for hearts that dared the darkness
will return clad in masks not their own.

Cursed in the religion of the Most Gracious
is he who imprisons a people,
who strangles a thought in its cradle,
who lifts the whip over flesh,
who silences the tongue of truth,
who builds walls to cage the living,
who raises high the banners of tyranny.

Cursed in every creed and scripture
is he who squanders the rights of humankind,
even if his lips murmur prayers,
even if his hands scatter alms,
even if he walks the earth
clutching the Bible in one hand
and the Qur’an in the other.

The first gift you take from this world is a breath,
and the last you give back is a sigh.
Between that drawing in and that letting go
lies but a brief caravan of days.

So be merciful to your heart,
tender with your soul,
and do not weigh it down
with the dust of what bears no fruit.

The good is the mirror of mercy upon the earth
forgiving as the sky forgives its clouds.
Yet when he turns away,
he returns to the silence from which he came.

No road reaches him except through the heart’s light.
And he who has never known that light
will wander forever among the shadows.

where the last coal of creation still glows.
If you reach in with moonlit fingers,
hunting for the soft vein of my weakness,
the fire will climb your veins
and crown your limbs in smoke.
Beloved
I told you: my heart is poetry,
and poetry is the heart of the witch’s son.
Do not wound it,
lest it choose the hour to wound you.
And when it does,
its betrayal will taste
like pomegranate in the dark
sweet, and red, and endless.