The folktales of my homeland remind me of days I have not lived
the days of free olive trees, open borders, and the calming sea,
days that were stolen from me before I could even enjoy their sweetness.
Generations ago we sat in our beautiful Eden.
I see the tears of my ancestors in the shrilling cries of children;
I hear the whispers of children in the timeless laughter of my ancestors.
Cut my body into pieces and plant them in the soil of my homeland.
Let my honeyed blood bring prosperity;
let your sinking boots drown in our sorrows.
We must not give up; we must adapt.
If you are hit by the same hand every day,
you do not turn the other cheek so it hurts less
you learn to move your head.
We have loved, and we have lost.
With each wave, the desert sinks,
revealing the bones of our elders.
Lay on the sand and listen to its hum.
Drown in the grief of those before you;
relish in the joys of those after you.
Where the desert meets the sea,
my love for you was born
a shadowed passion, doomed in its first trembling breath,
strangled into silence, as was my sorrowing motherland.
For the love of my land made me realize I had the ability to love at all.
Where the desert meets the sea,
our bodies return.
Where the desert meets the sea,
I am home.
HAMZAH TALEB is a writer and legal studies scholar based in Toronto, whose work is steeped in the language of love, as feeling, philosophy, and politics. He explores how desire, justice, and tenderness shape identity, weaving the romantic into the legal, the poetic into the political, and care into critique.