I met a muse who was born a goddess. She played down her powers until she met me. She served me eternal wine, promised barrels of honey. The original apple, she said, was mislabeled: a classic case of failed marketing. The apple was nothing but the right breast of Eve, a metaphor lost on uncreative men. And no woman cared to explain.

I hope to meet my heroine among the newcomers, before I deplete my energy or worse yet, stay untapped and left to rust. I will find the biggest forest on the planet, set it on fire, and launch my worries and doubts crashing into its center. My heroine is out there, but I’m not sure where, or which country she belongs to, or what century she comes from. What books have her name? Whether the ocean could preserve our fingerprints.

I plant promises for the music to outdo silence, and for love to outshine the sun. If that is not commitment, the sky must be an illusion. The mountains will need to flatten themselves and absorb their dwellers’ meditations.

My heroine is out there and I swear to furnish the night for her. To serve her the spring on the palms of my long arms. With her grace, we will fill the front pages of newspapers, tap into the talisman’s secret channels, and rearrange the letters of alphabets.

My heroine and I will open a school for lovers, and ask them to dress poets in rare silk, or exotic feathers, from obscure islands; urge them to melt the world’s literature and apply its ink to their eyelashes. In the humanities, a new discipline will be inaugurated.

She feels like a beach town midwinter.
The alleys are empty, the streets wet,

and the ocean is lonely. The waves
may be louder, but they generate no interest.

Cold and gloomy, the beach town cannot be
recognized. Unlike summer, it is now deserted.

The long winter nights bring relief, however.
They save face from the constant beat of daylight.

A young soldier picnics in the countryside,
searches for butterflies and long-stemmed roses.

Fresh air runs through his rifle. The woman beside him
sports a long skirt and a camera around her neck.

The fields are blunt and honest;
with their secrets extended, their flaws exposed,
they feel intimate.

Here, the birds’ singing and trees’ whistling
are welcoming songs. The winds
in their contradicting directions
don’t disrupt old women’s prayers,
and the laughter of their children.

The soldier and the woman exchange moments of solitude
with their inner worlds. For fear of living on the margins
or rendering their presence obsolete, they open up
through a language marked with loneliness.

The woman thinks of a future
where her own daughter takes the dog for a walk.
The tough questions asked at parent-teacher conferences.
The many long hours
during history classes to sit through.
And the introductions around dinner tables.

What do you do? they will ask.
Their inevitable reply is interesting, no matter her answer.

Except when her listener has a reservoir of emotions,
like someone raised in the countryside,
where dancing was a doctrine,
and connecting with others is a way to draw strength.

Only then she could reach back
to the deep wounds of a past alive.
Although protected, the past is still haunting,
and exhausting to retell.

She devours her listener’s soft touch,
the sincere and passionate gaze.
A heart is opened: tender moments are born.
A shared experience she will revisit often.

The enormity of the tasks never intimidate them,
bureaucrats will keep at a job meticulously
without showing signs of fatigue or boredom.

Indifferent and with the resolve of one
who flatten a mountain
using nothing but an index finger,

to pull down soil inch by inch.
To ensure success,
others soon join in.

I have learned to value the deliberate pace
of the bureaucratic train. Even if it derails,
it finds its way back to the track.

There is wisdom in slowness: ask the turtle
how her shell grew tougher with every step.
The thickness provided her a much desired protection.

The afternoon wind strengthened, the sky darkened, people rushed home.
Mustafa is an Egyptian, a volunteer translator who became a gravedigger.
He took up a burning duty: to offer a dignified burial to his people.
He safely crossed the merciless Mediterranean Sea
to Greece on his student visa.

After the bodies of dead refugees piled up on the shores of Greece,
Mustafa decided to bury them, to honor them,
finally putting their bodies to rest.
Today he buried two women and a seven-year-old boy.
Burying a child was the hardest for him.
To be the last person to entrust a child’s corpse to the earth.

An elderly Greek lady from the next grave greeted the young
newcomer. The child introduced himself: my name is Sami,
and this is Leila next to me. She is not my mother.
I last saw Mom when the planes bombed Aleppo.
She entrusted me to her cousin.
Mom kissed me and promised to join me soon in Greece.
We both cried our hearts out that night.

My father owned a successful confectionery shop.
In school, before the war, my teacher often spoke of a spring —
Arabic and magnificent. I imagined green fields, butterflies,
laughing children, and everything sweet. Then people ordered the war.

Nothing has changed, the Greek lady interrupted.
I survived two devastating wars.
Systematic killing of innocent people —
for some, being Jewish was their only crime.
Tragedies of eternal shame for our humanity.

The abstract eliminated the concrete —
fringed and sick ideas justified murder.
Rest a little, I know your mother will find you.
Mothers keep their promises. My name is Maria
And it is a pleasure to meet you, my dear Sami.

I swear
to every lock
of your hair,

I will inch closer
each time I deliver
a kiss of lightest air,

for that is the only letter
I’ll write and my courage
dares to bear.