Tension Between Remembrance And Forgetting Poem by Mystic Qalandar

I remember—
or almost remember—
a place before arrival.
Before dust congealed around this breath.
Before the noise of separation began its long curriculum.

A time when I was summoned
from the ancient, uncreated stillness.
A Voice—immeasurable, yet nearer than my jugular:

Alastu bi-Rabbikum?
Am I not your Lord?

And my entire being rose
like a flower turning toward the first sun,
eyes flooded with light
too pure, too singular, too whole
to survive its translation into earth.

Since then, I have wandered,
carrying fragments of that forgotten radiance inside my ribs—
a broken alabaster of first witness,
a shard of the primordial covenant
sealed before time learned to count.

---

There is a country where I would drink music as though it were water—
not the music of strings and breath,
but the unheard melody of things returning to their source.
I would swallow light
until my veins themselves became luminous,
until the body ceased to be a prison
and became instead a lantern.

I would wear garments woven from spiritual dawns—
soft robes of emerald remembrance,
threaded with the gold of tawḥīd,
that unbreakable knowing:

Lā ilāha illā Huwa.

And I would no longer feel compelled
to disguise myself
in the heavy, borrowed costumes of the world.

No satanic voice would sneer at my solitude
as though freedom were rebellion.
No waswās would call my stillness
an act of treason against the ordinary.

There would be no shame without cause.
No tyrant-self demanding endless obeisance.
No phantom master leaning close to say:
You exist only by my permission.

For I was not created
to kneel before the nafs—
that counterfeit caliphate of appetite and fear—
nor to live enchained
beneath shadow sovereignties
that rise and fall like fever dreams.

I was created for that first Yes.
The one spoken before tongues could form it.
The one that still beats, unnamed,
beneath every no the world has taught me.

And so I remember—
or almost remember—
a place beyond forgetting's reach.

—MyKoul