By: Manal Rabiey
I weep for myself the way an exile weeps for a homeland erased from the maps of longing. Life has circled around me, beating my heart like war drums with no truce, until I no longer know who I am; as if I had slipped out of my old skin and risen from it a ghost drifting through the streets without shadow or face. Once, I held my heart in my hands like a fresh blossom, pressing it to my chest and guarding its pulse from the wind. Now I carry it as a cold stone with no warmth, no solace. I am no longer myself, and my heart is no longer my heart; arrows have been planted in it until it became a forest of wounds, each wound speaking my name and denying me at the same time.
I sit before my mirror and see only my eyes heavy with seas of salt, whispering secrets I can no longer understand. I once believed I knew the road back to myself, but the paths have vanished, turned into a labyrinth of smoke, distant voices, and withered dreams. Yet within all this ruin there still lives a small voice that resembles me, crying with me, teaching me that tears are not defeat but a last attempt to rescue what remains of my purity. I weep for myself because I search for myself in the rubble of days, writing myself on paper, hoping to find me between the lines. Perhaps tears are the faint light that will guide me back to my own being, like a child returning to its mother’s embrace after a long wandering.
