By: Dr. Adnan Bouzan

I never uttered your name, for names confine you as a cage confines the bird of light, and letters—no matter how they gather or align—remain powerless to carry your weight, which surpasses all languages. You are not a call to be answered, but a tremor that storms the body uninvited, a glimpse of absence that turns into presence, and a wish that blossoms in a silence that knows no setting.

I have written much, kindled from my language lanterns for the people; they chanted my name, applauded my poems, and bore my words as one bears the sword in triumphal processions. Yet when I turned inward, I realized that the greatest house not yet built is that hidden house, where you alone reside, in the deepest depths of my heart that has known no dweller but you.

O you who emerged from the womb of the soul, you who shattered the pride of a man who thought he could never be captured nor broken… I never bowed in war, nor in the presence of kings, until you came—and my whole lifetime bent before you without resistance. I once thought love was merely a word spoken, but you revealed it as a power that sweeps through man, strips him of himself, and turns swords before him into toys of iron that neither wound nor strike.

I write to you not to add another verse to the world’s anthology, nor to adorn a wall with words, but to bear witness that my very blood has become ink, and that every message to you is nothing but an open wound spilled upon the page. My poetry is no longer pride, nor satire, nor praise; it has become confession, surrender, and the certainty that—even with my dominion over rhyme—I have not found a single letter vast enough to contain your expanse.

So let these words remain suspended in the mailbox of time, walking on the feet of centuries until they reach you. And if they do, know that my voice is still alive, born not to echo only in the markets of poets, but to extend to you—you, who deserve nothing less than eternity.

You are the meaning concealed within the unseen, the secret that grants days their sense, the certainty that turns wandering into a path, loss into refuge, and pain into prayer.
And if the soul has a crown above all that the world contains, you are my crown. And if time has a memory carved upon the rocks of eternity, you are the engraving that cannot be erased.

O woman who is not inhabited by words, but who inhabits words themselves; O light unseen by eyes, yet grasped by the pulse… remain as you are: an unseen flame that ignites the present, a shadow that rewrites me anew each time I imagine that I have reached my end.