A Passing Love Letter

Yasmin Salah* My mother did not give birth to me in a warm room on a feather bed. I was not born in the desert, yet my skin endures thirst. My Bedouin accent carpets the sky, and the span of my arms is enough to circumambulate seven times in the night. Emptiness befriends me, and I am filled to the brim. The sun boils over the embers of my heart every morning. I was not born on the riverbank, yet no one can stop my flow. These are not my eyes, but a plant my father planted, which came to life in his hands. This is not my mouth, but the fruit of my shyness, which desires itself when I gaze into the surface of the water. I was not born in the belly of a whale, yet I am always afraid the sea will devour me. I drown at the mere thought of it, and I strike out with both hands whenever I hear the sound of the waves. I choke with the breath of life when I catch sight of the blue before me. I carry my grave within me, in the form of the sea! I was not born in Paradise, yet my fruits are unknown to humans. Between me and the Tree of Immortality... lie twenty enchanting poems. I was not born at the gates of Hell, yet my soul devours existence as if it were its only spark. My mother did not give birth to me in a cemetery, yet I embrace the gravestones, kiss the thorns, and do not fear the jinn as I was made to fear them in my childhood. With the hands of the earth beneath my feet, my father’s body opens for me a door in every house. My mother did not give birth to me on the surface of the moon, yet my head bangs against the ceiling of the sky whenever I raise it. My body is a precise orbit for the planets, and my hands draw threads between the stars whenever I wave them. And whenever I secretly slip away from myself, a black hole named Love swallows me whole. My mother did not give birth to me. My father did not give birth to me. I am a delicious sphere in their imagination. Read me in a passing love letter between them. * Egyptian poet