By Dr. Adnan Bozan

I saw you before the sun laid eyes on you,
Before longing was born in the soul of distances.
You lived in my pulse,
As a thought dwells on the brow of a sleepless poet,
As if you emerged from an ancient line left unsaid,
Or from a dream suspended in the corners of memory... never aging.

When my soul called for you,
Bodies did not wait to touch—
My heart turned to you,
Like a flower turns toward the sun at dawn,
Without thinking, without arranging its breath,
As if the path to you was written inside me in the secret ink of life.

You are not a person...
You are the shadow of a thought that passed through me unnoticed,
You are the echo of a sound that resembles me to the point of loss,
You resemble me as if you were my shattering,
As if you were my pain reflected in a silent mirror.
You know my sorrow before it composes its features,
And touch my scars as if they were first carved into your own skin.

I try to flee from you—into you,
Like a river rushing to the sea,
And I discover that the distance between us is a white illusion
We recite to deceive time.
For we meet every night in a mirror
That reflects only a single soul—
A soul that knows no separation between the lover and the beloved,
As if we are a riddle created to be completed in the other's eyes.

Don’t ask me: How do I love you?
I have no definition for love.
All I know is that I breathe you...
I breathe you as a fetus breathes the warmth of the womb,
And every breath brings you back to me—
Tender, warm, renewed like the first rain after a long drought.

When I write you,
The letters tremble,
And the paper blushes,
Ashamed of how small a space it offers to hold you.
You are vastness,
You are a song without end,
And a flute that plays only the lament of my heart.

In your silence,
I hear the crowding of longing,
And in your eyes,
I read my own history,
As if you were written on my pages since the beginning.

O my mirror,
O the shards of my heart in the shape of a woman,
Do you remember when we passed through each other without touching?
Did you feel that I was you,
And that love is not something we possess,
But something that consumes us,
Only to resurrect us within it?

I do not miss you—
I miss myself when you are within me.
So do not leave me...
For you are not merely the one I love,
But the one I become when I love.