Fate

A pomegranate cracked against the stone, dark rubies weeping into the dust of the hall. The wick of the lamp is a charred bone pointing to a sky that does not call.

I have worn the silk of a thousand prayers, perfumed my wrists with the scent of the tomb. I waited for the King on the jasper stairs, sweeping the shadows from the empty room.

The inkwell is a throat gone dry with salt; I traded my turban for a handful of rain. I looked for the star in the temple vault, and built a throne from the splinters of pain.

But the hinge didn’t creak for a crown or a sword; it was only the wind, stealing jasmine away. The flame I guarded, my only lord, burnt the map of the stars to grey.

They call it a ruin, a crack in the glaze,

as if the temple were failing the light.

They bring the iron to the velvet of the cheek,

to smooth the shadows and banish the night.

But these silver rivers at the edge of the eye

are the fossils of every ghost of a smile.

The brow is a parchment where the sun sat to rest,

recording the journey, mile after mile.​

To wash away the lines is to burn the library down,

to bleach the ink from a letter you waited to read.

The soul is a scribe that does not know how to lie;

it plants the harvest in the hollow of the seed.

Let the skin fold like a prayer rug in the dark

soft and heavy with the weight of the knees.

A face without a map is a sky without stars;

I left my house that morning

as one leaves a grave they have grown used to.

My bones were tired of carrying my name.

Even the mirror had begun to look at me

with the pity of an old god

who has forgotten the language of miracles.

The streets were still half asleep.

Dust floated like abandoned prayers.

And I walked slowly as if every step

required the permission of a reluctant universe.

Inside my chest lived a courtroom of ghosts.

They spoke with the voices of teachers,

of parents, of silent cities

that had watched me grow crooked

like a wounded tree.

You are unworthy, they said.

You are a house built on unfinished dreams.

You are a failure no one bothered to mourn.

And I believed them

the way prophets believe in storms.

So I walked like a defeated soldier

returning from a war no one remembers.

The sky above me was the pale blue of an ancient myth.

I remembered how Icarus once loved the sun too much

and how the sea punished him for it.

I remembered how Sisyphus wakes each morning

with a stone heavier than yesterday.

Perhaps, I thought,

I am the child of their despair,

a sibling to those condemned

to repeat the same sorrow in different centuries.

The sunrose quietly over the rooftops.

It did not ask who I was.

It did not ask what I had failed to become.

It touched the world

as if everything deserved forgiveness.

The windows caught fire with gold.

The trees began whispering in green.

Even the pigeons carried small pieces

of dawn inside their wings.

And suddenly the earth looked less like a courtroom

and more like a garden

that had been waiting patiently for my arrival.

The sun placed its warm hand on my tired face.

And for the first time in many winters my heart

remembered its ancient language.

It says to me: Live.

Live like the rivers

that refuse to apologize for carving the mountains.

Live like the olive trees of forgotten villages

that survive wars simply by believing in tomorrow.

Live because the sun does not rise for the perfect.

It rises for the broken,

the doubtful,

the wandering children of sorrow.

It rises even for those who believe they do not deserve it.

I stood there in the quiet revolution of morning.

And the ghosts inside my chest fell silent.

Somewhere in the distance a child laughed.

Somewhere a window opened.

And in that fragile, golden moment I realized

something the philosophers forgot to write:

Even the most exhausted soul

is only one sunrise away

I enter the therapist’s office

like a traveler stepping into a country

whose language they do not speak.

The walls are pale,

the questions rehearsed,

the silence arranged

like furniture that never moves.

She asks me,

"How does that make you feel?"

as if my heart were a simple door

that opens with the right sentence.

But my feelings are labyrinths

ancient cities where even the gods

lost their way.

I watch her nod,

pen tapping paper,

as though she could map my soul

with bullet points

and secondhand empathy.

She waits for me to spill something sacred,

but my throat closes

like a fist around secrets

that refuse to be catalogued.

I tell her pieces,

crumbs,

safe fragments.

Not the real storms.

Not the nights when the sky tilt

sand the world becomes a question

I cannot answer.

Therapy feels like holding my breath

under clean water

a place where drowning

looks too graceful

to be called pain.

Sometimes I want to shout,

to tell her that thinking hurts,

that digging into myself

is like excavating a civilization

buried for a reason.

But instead I sit still,

offering half-formed echoes

to a stranger

paid to listen.

It feels wasteful,

this ritual of opening and closing,

of being examined

like a cracked vase

placed carefully on a table

that no one will actually fix.

When I leave,

the world is unchanged.

The sky is still vast and indifferent.

My thoughts still swarm

like bees without a hive.

And I return to my life

with the same heavy quiet,

the quiet I’ve learned to carry

like a second spine.

Yet a small part of me wonders

if one day I’ll grow brave enough

to speak the full weight

of the darkness I swallow.

If one day

the right listener

might brush the dust off my ruins

and say,

"I see the whole of you."

But until then,

I walk out of those rooms untouched,

untouched and untouched,

a mystery even to myself,

a poem no one has quite learned

I left my house that morning

as one leaves a grave they have grown used to.

My bones were tired of carrying my name.

Even the mirror had begun to look at me

with the pity of an old god

who has forgotten the language of miracles.

The streets were still half asleep.

Dust floated like abandoned prayers.

And I walked slowly

as if every step required the permission

of a reluctant universe.

Inside my chest

lived a courtroom of ghosts.

They spoke with the voices of teachers,

of parents, of silent cities

that had watched me grow crooked like a wounded tree.

You are unworthy, they said.

You are a house built on unfinished dreams.

You are a failure no one bothered to mourn.

And I believed them

the way prophets believe in storms.

So I walked

like a defeated soldier returning from a war

no one remembers.

The sky above me

was the pale blue of an ancient myth.

I rememberedhow Icarus once loved the sun too much

and how the sea punished him for it.

I remembered

how Sisyphus wakes each morning

with a stone heavier than yesterday.

Perhaps, I thought,

I am the child of their despair,

a sibling to those condemned

to repeat the same sorrow

in different centuries.

The sunrose quietly over the rooftops.

It did not ask who I was.

It did not ask what I had failed to become.

It touched the world

as if everything deserved forgiveness.

The windows caught fire with gold.

The trees began whispering in green.

Even the pigeons carried small pieces of dawn

inside their wings.

And suddenly

the earth looked less like a courtroom

and more like a garden

that had been waiting patiently for my arrival.

The sun placed its warm hand

on my tired face.

And for the first time in many winters

my heart remembered its ancient language.

It says to me:

Live.

Live

like the rivers that refuse to apologize

for carving the mountains.

Live

like the olive trees of forgotten villages

that survive wars

simply by believing in tomorrow.

Live

because the sun does not rise for the perfect.

It rises

for the broken,

the doubtful,

the wandering children of sorrow.

It rises even

for those who believe

they do not deserve it.

I stood there

in the quiet revolution of morning.

And the ghosts inside my chest

fell silent.

Somewhere in the distance

a child laughed.

Somewherea window opened.

And in that fragile, golden moment

I realized something the philosophers forgot to write:

Even the most exhausted soul

is only one sunrise away

from wanting

I watched you like sunlight watches the sea, close, but never held.

You smiled, and my silence became a cathedral no one prays in.