And I knew then,
if I dared let the poison of love consume my being,
I would never be able to recover.
And yet,
I let it happen.
And I wish I regretted it,
but I don't think I ever will.

A letter of love that I keep.
You are a good memory that makes me weep.
Time flies so fast,
I close my eyes with a good memory to reminisce.

My love doesn't last,
but you are the first of everything I write in this piece.

Can you take me back at the time we meet?
So I will know how to write again what love is, and falling in love with you in bliss.

Morning, noon, evening, dawn.
All of my love pieces, written in the stars.
I know half of it is with you, folded, kept, a bittersweet memory.

Perhaps you are at peace,
or filled with wonder
and curiosity.

Perhaps your eyes burn,
seeing a world that is unclear
and slow.

Perhaps you imagine your sister,
calling your name so that you can return
to the carefree day above.

Perhaps you want to stay,
unmoving, heavy, gently sinking, and
wondering if anyone will notice.

Regardless,
you lift your body back up,
breaking the seal between
awareness and isolation.

Water that had weighed you down
is now humbled to mere drops,
stripped away by the cold air.

There is a sound to this feeling,
this return to clarity,
and you hear the transition
from nothing to everything.

It's the sound of the water,
surrounding your ears,
being replaced by air.

It's the sound of the hazy dream,
being swept away
by the reality of a sunny morning.

It's the sound of you, habibi,
whispering
bamoot feeki

It's the sound of being brought back to life.

The feelings come flooding back,
they didn't even ask.
They tear apart your heart
and empty your soul.
Open your wounds
and leave you cold.
Your heart is emptied
and your eyes no longer can hold back
the tears.
You hate yourself
and ask yourself "why?"
He didn't do anything wrong.
You just fell in love.

“Don't you miss being in love?”, she asks.
I simmer, gathering myself  and my thoughts.

No, I don't, because I have not been in love;
Not in the manner I imagine it.
I have loved - beautifully, might I add -
But never have I been in love.

How can I have?
At my best, all I knew was to compel, persuasively,
someone into loving me -
the best possible way I knew how.
I revealed just enough of myself,
the beautiful of myself,
the parts of me that drew butterflies.

Hidden were the broken parts of me,
those which keep me awake, sleepless -
'til the moon kisses me goodnight,
in the last hours before dawn.

I am not, by any means, denying ever loving.
I have loved, blindly and beautifully.
All I have ever been good at was loving -
loving someone into loving me,
the best way possible.

But, all of their love was inadequate.
A love which always fell short of loving me,
the best way possible.

Love; inadequate:
Unable to express loving me,
unable to express themselves of loving me.

In turn,
I was slapped with sloppy efforts of loving me -
Vague inadequacies of love.
It was never enough, not remotely close,
to what I had imaged loving me would be.
It was short of ever arousing me internally,
short of wits to spiral me into being in love.

And so, how can I miss being in love,
when it has always been a feeling that eluded me?
How can I miss being in love, when in love -
I concealed the broken parts of me?
How can I have been in love when I was lonely, in love?

How can I have been in love,
when all I knew of being in love was to love myself -
by loving whomever loved the aesthetic parts of me?

Loving me has always been an infatuation -
an infatuation of the broken pieces of me,
coming together to create an illusion of a love -
an unsatisfactory love for loving me.

How can I have ever been in love when no one has known,
expressed, conjured the best possible way of loving me.
All of me.

Once more, up at the last hours before dawn -
awaiting the moon to kiss me goodnight, I tell her.

You were not light blue and I wasn't red.
We did not collide and produce a lilac sky.
We were black.
Never first, the secondary colours of light mixed together
to produce black.
We were a dark nothing.
We collided and produced a blank white canvas,
for us to get our own shades of paint and throw on it.
For us to produce whatever colour sky we want.