50 Faces of Separation
The Desert of Trials: Walking Where Questions Outnumber Answers
Some poems arrive like companions.
Others arrive like a journey you did not choose but must walk anyway.
“The Desert of Trials” is one of the most personal poems in 50 Faces of Separation. It was written from a place where life feels stretched between endurance and unanswered questions. Not the loud pain of loss, but the long, exhausting ache of continuing without shade, without refuge, without certainty.
When I wrote:
“This wilderness of affliction, this torment of the road
No shade, no refuge, not even the mercy of a mirage.”
I was thinking about those phases of life where even hope feels deceptive. Where you keep walking, not because you believe in arrival, but because stopping feels heavier than moving forward.
This poem is filled with questions because separation rarely gives answers. It only deepens inquiry. Lines like:
“Why do I wait here for a voice that never comes?
Why am I steeped in longing, endlessly unsettled?”
reflect the kind of waiting that slowly reshapes a person. A waiting that is not tied to time, but to memory, expectation, and promises that once felt certain.
There is also confrontation in this poem. A quiet argument with life itself. When I ask:
“If you are not, then for whom does this world exist?”
it is not defiance it is exhaustion. It is the moment when absence becomes so large that it begins to question meaning.
What stayed with me while writing The Desert of Trials was the weight of memory. The past does not remain behind us; it walks beside us, whispering, reproaching, reminding. As the poem says:
“Shadows of the past, the clamour of memories,
The weeping of moments, the heart’s quiet reproach.”
Yet even in this desert, something continues. Breath. Witness. Awareness. The poem does not promise healing it acknowledges endurance. The chains of separation are heavy, but they mark the evening of reckoning, not the end of the journey.
This poem is for those who have walked long stretches of life without applause, without clarity, carrying silence as their only companion. If you have ever felt that your questions were more faithful than your answers, then this desert may feel familiar to you.
Thank you for walking a few steps of it with me.
Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi
Some poems arrive like companions.
Others arrive like a journey you did not choose but must walk anyway.
“The Desert of Trials” is one of the most personal poems in 50 Faces of Separation. It was written from a place where life feels stretched between endurance and unanswered questions. Not the loud pain of loss, but the long, exhausting ache of continuing without shade, without refuge, without certainty.
When I wrote:
“This wilderness of affliction, this torment of the road
No shade, no refuge, not even the mercy of a mirage.”
I was thinking about those phases of life where even hope feels deceptive. Where you keep walking, not because you believe in arrival, but because stopping feels heavier than moving forward.
This poem is filled with questions because separation rarely gives answers. It only deepens inquiry. Lines like:
“Why do I wait here for a voice that never comes?
Why am I steeped in longing, endlessly unsettled?”
reflect the kind of waiting that slowly reshapes a person. A waiting that is not tied to time, but to memory, expectation, and promises that once felt certain.
There is also confrontation in this poem. A quiet argument with life itself. When I ask:
“If you are not, then for whom does this world exist?”
it is not defiance it is exhaustion. It is the moment when absence becomes so large that it begins to question meaning.
What stayed with me while writing The Desert of Trials was the weight of memory. The past does not remain behind us; it walks beside us, whispering, reproaching, reminding. As the poem says:
“Shadows of the past, the clamour of memories,
The weeping of moments, the heart’s quiet reproach.”
Yet even in this desert, something continues. Breath. Witness. Awareness. The poem does not promise healing it acknowledges endurance. The chains of separation are heavy, but they mark the evening of reckoning, not the end of the journey.
This poem is for those who have walked long stretches of life without applause, without clarity, carrying silence as their only companion. If you have ever felt that your questions were more faithful than your answers, then this desert may feel familiar to you.
Thank you for walking a few steps of it with me.
Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi
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