Stay part II (Happy Birthday)

Dearest M.

Tempest, beloved, this is the year I give nothing to you. I've thought about it long and hard and I could only find one thing that could possibly make you happy today of all days and it is something that I cannot give. Another holds that happiness. Thus, I present to you now, my words. As I always have through all these years. 

I have written to you, written of you, read things as if they were written of you. In my letters, my poetry, I have summoned you in monikers and fashioned you into personas as countless as the distant stars. I have sworn you into my words, sworn to you in my words. I have built you fortresses in my mind with these words. They have become one with the very walls of my heart. To unseat you is unspeakable grief. Sometimes I shelter from thoughts of you in them but mostly, I admire their walls, the long lonely hallways, the crooked stairways; I admire my impossible affection for you. You are the vessel for my words. My medium, my tedium, my delirium.

This is all I do. I write of you in long reminiscences, I write you into an eternal precipice, because that is where the beauty of life is most stark. You fit into all these notions and more (such is the nature of a muse). You are many things to me and this is precisely why I will never cease to write of you. A word, a sentence, a paragraph. They are never enough. I have tried to sever this connection. I have tried to erase these words, raze my crumbling fortresses to the ground, scorch you out of my life. It pained me beyond my understanding, and if I am not mistaken, it pained you too.

I hope you read this with fondness for me. My intention is to remind you just what you mean to me and hopefully, to make you happy. I want you to know in this life that God has blessed us with, no matter how many years go by, how much changed things can be, I will stay the same. I treasure what we have, and always will. 

Dear sweet friend, happy birthday. May Allah SWT bless you with love and happiness in this life and the next. Inshallah.

Ever yours,

L.