By: Manal Rabiey
The universe resembles us… or perhaps we are the ones who resemble it.
I see you in the breath of morning, and you see me in the first ray of sunlight.
I see you as a sun waking gently, stretching in light, then chasing after me like a moon that spent the whole night watching you sleep,
seeing his life in your glow, staying up all night strumming your light across the strings of his heart.
But when morning comes, he flees in fear… as if your nearness is fire, as if light is unbearable for one born of shadow.
The sun does not know how immense she is.
And he… is a small moon, a silver coin lost in her vast universe.
He plays her light, yes, pouring it into melodies in the dark, but he cannot come closer.
Until the distance wore him thin, and his longing danced him into near dissolution — he approached her…
He longed to die in her arms, dreamed of burning in her fire, melting willingly in her blaze.
But when she looked into his eyes, she understood…
That poor soul had not come to live, but to vanish.
She saw how small he truly was, fragile like a wish,
and she swore upon him to turn back.
Yet she vowed to send him her light every morning,
to leave him, at every dawn, a string of her radiance,
and he would remain as he always had —
dancing around her, orbiting her,
until he perished from longing…
or melted into her eternal daylight.
That morning dance,
when the sun whispers to the moon from afar,
resembles us… resembles your love hiding behind your smile,
and mine, lost between the shadows of your voice.
It’s me, every time I come near, afraid of burning,
and you, as you wave your light at me… then disappear.
As if the sun and moon were lovers who never meet,
but the whole universe watches their dance every dawn.
As if we, you and I, repeat that same dance each time we meet —
coming close… whispering… then parting,
yet still loving, still burning, still longing,
never stopping the orbit.
So how did longing conquer them?
Or rather, how did it not kill them?
