What do I call you?

What do I call you? - Haibun

We were young and grieving when we met.

Pain had sat on our lips like wounded birds, afraid to fly. And shone from our eyes, like rough-cut diamonds. It must have emanated from our being, white-hot and searing, drawing us together like moths to a flame. Like little girls, we had giggled, eating candy floss, as though we could pluck joy out of the cool, night air with sticky fingers. Maybe we laughed because we wanted to cry. Maybe we realised that pain can be transmuted into joy. Our hearts cut open and the pain billowing out with our out-breaths allowing joy to flow in with our in-breaths.

That night, at the fair

Joy was sweet, light candy floss

You woke up smiling

I dare not think what I would be if you had not come into my life. It’s like imagining a rainbow with colours missing. Or music with holes in it, the heart searching, in vain, for the missing parts. Or spring without butterflies, afternoons heavy with torpor. I am grateful for the pain that brought you to me, bound us together and then set us free.

What do I call you?

for some things there are no words

just joyful silence

~~~

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Bjorn and Hamish have set the challenge for Haibun Monday – to write a Haibun inspired by Khalil Gibran’s words. The edict is to write only one haiku, but I am a rule-breaker, and also, the second one just prostrated itself on the page. What to do? I couldn’t kill it. Sorry, Bjorn.

What do I say about Gibran? The heart swells up with joy just thinking about his words. The lyricism, the melody, the grace, the soulfulness and of course, the simple truth in them. I am eternally grateful to the person who introduced me to Gibran.