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يَّْٰ's avatar

how do i repent you, my most beloved sin?

how do i return to an innocence i never knew, to a place that never invited me?

every attempt to pull away from you shatters at the first memory,

every memory of you comes unbidden, slipping in to undo me.

have you forgotten that i was once a part of you?

you are the sin i loved before i even understood what love meant,

you settled into my breath as night settles in my chest,

every shadow in my body echoing your absence.

do you remember the days i believed distance could be my salvation?

i thought forgetting you would free me,

and that time and space would wash my hands of your mark.

but loss became a deception,

and leaving you was nothing but an illusion.

how can i possibly repent you?

can repentance ever be true if the heart remains captive to the mistake it resembles?

how do i turn away from you when your shadow weaves through my nights,

whispering that you were, and that you will remain,

that every letter of repentance i carve onto the walls of my soul is merely an echo of you?

i admit that you were, and still are, a part of me.

every time i call you in silence, i find a secret in you that i cannot speak,

a truth i do not want to forget,

because forgetting you would be a death before it even began.

perhaps repentance is not a cleanser of sins,

perhaps it is a dance with the shadow you planted in me,

to keep the wound, to keep you, to love you despite the pain and the distance,

to understand that some memories must remain,

to teach me how to love, how to lose,

and how to return to myself after abandoning you, again and again, without permission.

how do i repent you, my most beloved sin?

perhaps i never will.

perhaps keeping you in memory is repentance itself,

you are the only truth i have ever wished to remain inside me without end.

you are repentance, and you are sin, and you are everything in between.

Asma's avatar

Aaargh I wish I could understand Arabic better to read this! Is your comment under it the translation?

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