Dear unsynchronized soul,
Your beloved has departed and no nights in worship could have ever made him stay, but still you keep coming back to the place where you first realized that this was love! When the day dragged into a painful separation and when only in the darkness of the night did your heart begin to soften. Every beautiful thing requires a sacrifice, but the deprivation of the body can never be compared to the deprivation of the heart. In his absence, every enjoyment of this world has never tasted so bitter.
You took his love and hid it from the world and from every loose tongue you would flee, in fear that the sins of the people would pollute your love. You did everything to make sure that he was yours, but that did not stop him from slipping from your fingers at the break of dawn. Even if you had crucified your hands to his and pleaded in every language that your heartbreak spoke his departure would have always been decreed.
He made you become all the goodness that you never were. At night you would whisper to him that you didn’t know who you were anymore, and he would gather you in his arms reassuring you that this is who you were always destined to become. It was only in seclusion from the rest of the world that your heart found peace and it was only after every door had shut that you were guided to a door that had been yearning for your presence for years.
You don’t grieve that he is gone because you know that every sun must set, and of course he is everything the sun is not! For the intensity of his warmth makes every sin fall from you like sweat and you used to live in the shadows before. But now the footsteps of his light are everywhere, guiding you to goodness and everything that is pure.
No. it’s not grief that has caused you to become so unsynchronized with the world. It took you 30 days to fall in love with him, but you’ve already started counting down the days it will take to forget him. How long until your heart hardens again? You lived in drought for many years but when he came, he taught you how to cry. How long until the rain stops and the goodness in you stops growing?
Oh, my sweet soul.
The month of Ramadan may have ended but life for you has only just begun, for the true life is only the life of the heart. You’ve found the door to salvation so never stray too far from it and never let your vision be distracted from other than it. Run after those that walk ahead of you in humble submissiveness so that you may share some of their light and avoid those who dance to destruction with their eyes covered so that they don’t blind you from the remembrance of your Lord.
Oh, my hopeful soul.
Pray that when Ramadan returns you are not of those who are heedless. Be of those who wait for his arrival eagerly and adorned with the beauty of piety and righteousness. And when you meet him you will say:
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
by Ifrah Yusuf
(Post Ramadhan Competition Entree)