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رند (She/Her)
Freedom is calling
I saw it in your eyes
Closer towards us
You told me with your smile
So much between us
Rivers and seas
Knowing that one day
They'll bring you close to me
I read your poem every time I miss you. I’ve spent years reading your poem. Paper tattered and torn, yearning for its smooth edges in the palm of your hand, the way it felt when you first gave it to me.
Our tree is still here. Where I carved your name into a heart, where you carved yours into mine. Next to the others.
Are they still here? Do they visit this tree too?
I want you to know that I kept our promise. The children are performing a play they wrote about our love today. It feels like the first day I met you.
We were both 12, caught between the final moments of girlhood and the rest of our lives.
“Do you like to read?”
“Sometimes.” I couldn't remember the last time I picked up a book that wasn't assigned in school.
“I wrote this essay about my favorite fantasy book that’s opening in theaters next week.” You walked me to your bedroom and showed me your latest works displayed on the wall. “I write my own stories too,”
I asked what you liked to write about.
“Love,” without pause or hesitation.
I’ve always heard songs, movies, and poetry describe falling in love in similar ways. Where just hearing the person’s name spins you out of reality. The dimensions I’ve traveled, bewildered by the infinite since you told me yours.
Your first gifts to me–the knots in my stomach and the series of electric shocks gripping my chest, all bittersweet outcomes in the taste of your gaze; the pain of the longing, the joy of its suspense.
You would sneak into my room and ask if I wanted to go to your favorite spot at the beach. I didn’t care about anything else. I wasn’t afraid of anything with you and I would’ve gone anywhere you asked. Especially if it meant we were together.
Walking there was my favorite part. We always took the same footpath curated by us and no one else, but every time we went, it felt like a new place.
Time traveling through our desires past, present and future, we confessed our dreams to the sky.
Freedom is calling
I saw it in your eyes
Closer towards us
You told me with your smile
So much between us
Rivers and seas
Knowing that one day
They'll bring you close to me
That morning was the first time you held my hand. I retrace this memory against the feeling of your fingertips tracing mine every time I miss you. I’ve spent years retracing your fingertips against my own memory.
In the salty breeze of the sea, I can still taste your skin from our last night together.
Your book was recovered and I learned about how you dedicated your days to the children.
It doesn’t feel like you ever left. You respond to my calls in the echoes of the wind and I smile now, remembering it all, watching it play out by the same children.
“Nothing has the power to separate me from my journey to your heart.” The play concludes with your oath to the sea the last day we spent here together. The children take their bows as the sun sets on this same horizon that holds our dreams.
You kept your promise in the grace of the sea,
I kept mine on the shores of our land you freed for me.
I blink, grateful for our love, our love, our love. Me and you. Me and Her. Me and everyone that’s home.
Art by Mishandi J. Sarhan