Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe
You chose silence as a pillow,
resting your head
on my absence
as if it were
something that does not scream.
Do you know
that the silence you sleep in
is choking me?
That abandonment
is not a stance,
but a cold, deliberate stab?
When meeting became impossible,
time stretched
until it begged your voice for air,
and your name began to bleed in my mouth
every time I called it.
I had no choice
but to recruit the universe against you:
I summoned the breeze to be my throat,
the birds to expose me to the sky,
the seas, the oceans, the rivers
to carry the remains of my voice
to the hollow of your ear.
I told the water:
touch her sense of smell—
perhaps she will remember
that love has a scent,
and that I once was it.
You sit on my heart
like a merciless queen,
issuing verdicts
without a single word.
Do you know
that love, when unspoken,
rots?
That hearts, when imprisoned too long,
explode—
but do not die?
I ask for no tenderness,
no promise,
no perfect return.
I ask for a crack in the wall of silence,
a broken breath,
a slaughtered word that says:
“I am still here.”
How long this abandonment?
How long will silence feel safer
than a heart
that loves you to extinction?
I am burning,
unable to leave,
withering,
unable to die,
living like someone
who rests his head on a bomb
and waits.
If silence is your decision,
then speak—
so I may learn
how to survive
your name.
