Salik Shah

I waited for months for the words to come.
They didn't—until you returned.
Should I repeat the story of a naïve poet
searching for love, and hastily,
running away,
thinking he had found one?

The story in which he built to
her a temple of some sort
with his heart, and gave her all the words
he had, before going away, clueless
without knowing the meaning of silence.
The day I left the city in which I loved you
I stopped being a poet
The day I thought I was being salvaged
I was getting tied to the pity of a woman
I didn't love or care to understand.
And the cities that awaited him,
were too poor to afford him any words
and the women whom he met
were not to be satisfied without love.
Now that I have stopped writing to you,
You know I can say it to you:
In the beginning there was a word
and the word was you.

June 28,2010