Who taught you to dissolve your shadows being.

To let the sea’s salt hymn 

Knead your fractures into pearl— 

A luminous echo of the deep’s quiet storm? 

From what heavenly voice did you borrow the courage 

To exhale your final sigh into the sun’s newborn arms, 

Its fingers gilding your edges, 

As though light alone could unknot your name? 

Does the sun cradle a heart, molten and wild, 

Where your breath still hums in its furnace of hours— 

Or did you slip through the cracks of its blazing hymn, 

A wisp of smoke in the throat of the sky? 

Tell me: does the dawn remember your silhouette, 

Or did you scatter yourself in its gold, 

A soul unbound, dissolving like a scent in the air  

Into the horizon’s unblinking eye....

Rehana Shajar