Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe

To the woman whose name became a heartbeat in my blood,
a light within my darkness,
and a destiny I would never wish to end.

You…

You who rise within my midnight
and turn the darkness into a sky
from which the stars themselves descend…

What secret did God entrust to your eyes,
that one glance from you
can awaken my heart
more fiercely than a thousand suns?

I do not merely love you…

I dwell within you.

I dwell within your voice
when it passes over me like a gentle breeze
and stills every storm within my soul.

I dwell within your eyes
when you look at me
and I forget who I was,
who I am,
and where I was ever meant to go.

For when I behold you,
I do not see the world—
I see the reason
the world was made.

My beloved…

How many times have I tried to write you,
only to find my words too small for my love?

How many times have I tried to describe you,
only to find poetry itself
ashamed of its inadequacy?

For you are not merely a woman I love—

You are a poem
that took the form of a woman,
and made your eyes
the dwelling place of my heart.

And if one day they ask me,

What is love?

I shall say:

It is to have a woman
in whom I see my morning
when night has fallen;

to find my soul within her
when the road beneath my feet is lost.

It is to yearn for you
even while you stand before me;

to fear the world’s harshness toward you;

to be jealous even of the stars,
because they may behold you
when I cannot.

I want you—not merely as a man desires a woman,
but as the thirsty desire water,
as the earth awaits the rain,
as a heart, after wandering through eternity,
finally finds the one soul
meant to dwell within it.

And if life must have an ending,
I shall not ask it to last forever.

I ask only this:

Let it pass
with you within it.

And if love itself has a destiny,
then let mine be this:

to remain a man who loves you
until his final heartbeat.

And if Heaven should ask me one day,

What do you desire from eternity?

I shall answer:

**I desire neither a throne,
nor a palace,
nor immortality…

I desire only to awaken every morning
and find that you
still love me.**

For you are my sun that never sets,
my moon that never fades,
my star that never falls,
and the road whose ending
I never wish to find.

And when death finally closes
the door of this mortal life,
I shall leave behind a single poem
for lovers yet unborn…

So they may know
that once, upon this earth,

there lived a man
who loved a woman
so completely…

that after her,
love itself could no longer be defined
without speaking her name.