Moh Maya

They called it ishq and I believed them, not knowing they meant ishq majazi, the borrowed flame, the lamp held up against the sun. Love is beautiful. Love does not end.

But the love that binds is firaq wearing the mask of wasl, separation dressed as union, the sweetest foe, the last to fall. The warmth was real. The warmth was never mine.

Hold the lamp too close and the parda catches, the veil burns, and for a breath you cannot tell the fire of longing from the fire that frees. Beloved, this is fana.

Not the death I feared but the death I asked for, the self thinning to smoke, the smoke to nothing, the nothing where You were waiting all along. And after the burning, baqa,

the small flame gone, the great fire remaining, not I who loves but Love that loves through what is left. Moh Maya, you were never the wall between us.

You were the parda over my own face. The fire takes the veil. The face was always His.