I sleep here
And wake up a thousand years earlier
I love you today
And seems as if I loved you for a thousand years
I do not know, or do not remember
How I ended up a marble plate on a museum wall
They said I was a daughter of a smith
And once said I was a dancer in the court of a king
Or maybe he was a great sultan
And said I have done whatever I did
To seize his heart
They said I had black long hair
And a thin little waist
Like Jasmine, the beloved of Aladdin
But I had no giant
Nor a magic mat
To fly me to his balcony
To sing in the moonlight
They said I have marched the broad streets
And wrote long and long poems
Which I have loudly read
To tell how my heart has become
A fan of feather
Dreaming to be shaking beside his sleep
And my hands
A pillow of silk
Dreaming to lay
Beneath his head

I love you today
As if the two of us have escaped a furious war
In which you were a warrior
And I the girl who bandages your wounds
And pours you water at sunset
But when I wake up
I find me in a strange place
And they tell me the sultan had died
A great marble grave was made for him
And people after a thousand years, still him
But when he passed away,
A girl with long black hair
Had pursued him
And read him poems until she also died
And marbled
Just like him
Into a plate
And so they hung her just beside him,
In a museum

Marwa Melhem