Status Updates From Water

I Traveled to Every City:

[My soul was] “a restless heart with no wings.”
…
“Love called out to my soul,
come in, come close, I’ve built a house for you.
It won’t be free of sorrow or trial.
Come anyway.”
…
And who am I when Love obliterates the I
I thought I was,
drawing me from one path, leading me on another?”
…
“I could tell you,
but every time I get to this point,
the tip of my pen breaks.

“Man, Man, Man” Poem

“What kind of hunter?
Caught in your own trap-
a thief stealing from your own house.”
…
“Enthralled by stuff and status,
the crown, the turban, the king’s beard-
thorns pricking your own hands,”
…
“Gazing at the mirror,
You tilt your hat like a crescent moon-
but where is your light?”

“When I leave this body,
people will ask—
what did he do with his life?

I knew you, beloved.
That was enough.”

“You tore open my heart.
Now it shines with a new luster.”

“When the sun and moon set, they climb another sky.
When you see me going down, see me rising.
A bucket disappears in the well and comes up full.
A seed is buried in the ground.
A flower sprouts.
Why imagine another fate for the seed of the human soul?”

“You play the strings of my heart.
You play a new chord—
light of mine, love of mine, eyes of mine—
you are music-the melodies, the fade-out, and the memory of it all.
Each breath with you, a new note, a new color.
Every chord you strum lifts a curtain from my eyes, waking me from oblivion, from all my forgetting.”

“I’ll never tire of you.
I’ll never stop thirsting for you—
that’s my only fault.”

“This seam might hold
This seam might split.
I give my heart anyway.
Separation might tear my robe to shreds.
His scissors might wound me—
I know. I give my heart anyway.”

“The grief-struck teach me.
The Love-drunk teach me.
Enthralled by their bravery, their joy, their triumph, I cast off my chains.
May this freedom last forever.”

Kind of sad to be finishing this collection tonight

“What do you feed the mind to make a mind kind, noble, eager to serve?”

If anyone’s writing a psych textbook and needs epigraphs, I can hook you up 🤝

“We are free of gripes, free of nagging thoughts and delusions,
raucous laughter is here,
parrots drunk on celestial honey.

A stroke of magic that we are here,
while breathing the air of Baghdad's orchards,
while breathing the air of Khorasan's streams, you and me.”

Forcing myself to be slow with this book since we’ll probably have to wait 3 more years for the next set of translations lol

“When melodies flood our ears,
scorpions in the mind drown.
Sorrow loses its sting.

Honeyed notes on a singer's lips
sweeten mine.

Round after round of joy
and no one has drunk
even a drop of wine.”

We are SOOO back 🔥

“You show your face, your flushed face,
and stones spin with joy.
(…)
When I see your beauty, when I see your virtue,
I don’t need those two or three hanging lanterns,
I don’t need the moon.
The old rusty heavens are no mirror for your face.
You breathe in, you exhale, and from the tied up, tightfisted world, a new world is born.”

Unironically one of the 2025 releases I was most excited for