What My Arms Never Learned

You ask if I am healed. I wear the guise.

I do not call. I spare you from my sighs.

But moving on? A ship that never sailed,

With tattered sails, in a harbor I have failed

To ever leave. The map is of his face.

The wind, the memory of his grace.

They told me, "Sever. Clean the wound with air."

I took the scalpel of a silent prayer.

I cut the thread. I was so brave, so good,

And did exactly as a person should.

But this clean cut refused to scar or mend;

It is the means, and not the bitter end.

For something spoils in this enforced calm,

A silent, spreading, sentimental balm

That does not heal, but preserves the decay

Of a love I sent, unspoken, on its way.

My happiness is not a present tense,

But a past relic, stolen, stolen hence.

And though my hands are innocent of his skin,

A ghost of touch is festering within.

My arms, they ache. They are not merely sad.

They mourn a future they were never had.

They know the shape of him they never pressed,

This emptiness is all I now possess.

Written by Zaynab Al-Farha