Imagine A Lover With Scorched Lips Poem by Mohammad Younus

Imagine a lover with scorched lips,
his breath heavy with unsung prayers,
his eyes, red rivers of longing,
drowning in a sea of fire.

Imagine a lover whose words burn bitter,
a heart tempest-tossed in restless waves,
adrift between despair and yearning,
searching for a shore that may never appear.

Imagine a lover, hope dim and fading,
thoughts drained of color, like autumn leaves,
withered, brittle, swept by the wind,
a relic of love never fully born.

Imagine a lover, breath burdened with sorrow,
his gaze a well of unshed tears,
wandering deep into the wilderness,
a shadow lost among the flames.

For he, the dreamer, sculpted an idol,
fashioned from the dust of his own illusions.
His restless mind whispered:
'If no beloved graces this vast expanse of time,
then summon one—create, invent, deceive yourself,
for even a phantom is better than the void.'

Yet in the stillness of his deepest despair,
a truth began to shimmer, faint and pure.
The idol crumbled, its form dissolving,
as the lover's gaze turned inward,
beyond the flames, beyond the waves,
beyond the illusions of separation.

He saw that the beloved he sought
was never apart from himself.
The seeker and the sought,
the lover and the beloved,
were but two names for the same essence,
two waves in the same boundless ocean.

The fire that scorched him was his own light,
the waves that tossed him were his own depths.
The wilderness he wandered was his own heart,
and the tears he shed were the rain
that nourished the seeds of unity.

In the end, there is no duality,
no lover, no beloved,
no seeker, no sought.
There is only the One,
the single reality,
the absolute unity
that breathes through all things,
that dances in the flames,
that flows in the rivers,
that whispers in the wind.

The lover's illusion was not in the longing,
but in the belief that he was separate
from that which he sought.
When the veil of illusion fell,
he saw that he had always been
the beloved, the sought, the shore,
the One.

And in that seeing,
the flames became light,
the waves became stillness,
the wilderness became home.
The lover ceased to wander,
for he had found himself
in the heart of the One.

MyKoul