I was not searching—
but the wind did,
through the trembling leaves of my silences.
Love,
not the loud kind that burns cities,
but the quiet flame
that remembers where the candle stood last night.
You arrived—not as thunder,
but as dew on a tired windowpane,
a suggestion of something tender
beyond the blur.
I have known love—
aged like old wine,
sweet in its stillness,
heavy with memory.
It knows my breath,
the forgotten corners of my sighs.
It never leaves,
but still,
I ache for the taste
of love made new.
This is the curse—
or perhaps the miracle:
we are always lighting matches
in rooms already aglow,
chasing sparks
while the sun waits patiently
inside our bones.
What is it we seek?
A hand that shakes ours differently?
A voice that says our name
like it’s hearing it for the first time?
Or simply,
a reason to believe
that the heart can be born again
without dying.
And so I let it happen—
this flutter,
this foolish, tender unrest.
Not to replace,
but to remember
that even the oldest stars
once blinked open
with the audacity of new fire.
Love is not one flame.
It is the eternal readiness
to be set ablaze
again.
-Rashid Ali Ghazipuri