PAIN

PAIN

A Reflection

By Khaled Ghannam – Australia (11-10-2026)

My longing for you is a pain that kills,

A pain that fills my being with memories of you.

Of days when my heart carried your scent,

And life itself tasted of you.

They stole the joy I found in you,

And plundered the dreams I held beneath your skies.

My blood spilled upon your soil,

And the scent of strawberries faded

Into the remains of my wounded body.

Those were my final moments in your embrace.

They closed the eyes of my heart,

And I found myself there, in a place that was no place at all.

For without you, the entire world is nowhere,

And even safety brings me no joy.

How often we dreamed of living together in peace!

Yet the safety of foreign lands leaves me cold,

And everything without you is a cold, aching pain.

I fled their comforts to return to you.

They warned me, “You will suffer even more.”

For my homeland remains occupied,

And everything within it is broken.

The arrogance of the occupying forces tramples the dreams of the tormented,

And the brutality of soldiers steals joy

From stone, from tree, and from every human soul.

Yet I cannot bear to remain far from you.

I want to share your pain,

If only to feel that we are together.

How strange this pain is!

To be separated from you is pain.

To be reunited with you is pain.

Every conversation others have with me leads back to you,

And every piece of news about you is, in truth, about me.

How foolish it was to choose escape.

Our destiny is to remain together.

How could I ever flee from you?

What could your story possibly be, if not my own?

Your presence, even as a shadow, is the aura that surrounds me.

Your news is the record of accusations against me.

Whether I remain within your borders

Or wander through the lands of others,

I stand accused simply because your story is mine.

Your crime is that you love me,

And my destiny is that I belong to you.

I will return to you, so that we may remain together.

So that my tears may mingle with your rain,

And your scent may once again become

The fragrance upon my skin.

I will return to you so that I do not lose myself,

So that my imagination does not wander, lost,

Among the crowds of strangers.

Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond all calculation.

They wanted my life upon your soil to become a living hell.

They wanted to sever the umbilical cord that binds me to you.

An eternal separation.

An everlasting exile.

They declared it through bullets, gunpowder, and phosphorus:

“You do not belong to him,

And he does not belong to you.

You will live without pain in the arms of another,

And he will live without your pain in foreign lands.”

But joy without you is nothing more than a fleeting indulgence.

Joy without you is a hollow, shameful pleasure.

I want neither my reason nor my very being.

I want only to be myself, with you.

To ache together,

And together dream of hope.

To dream of a day when others will finally leave us in peace,

When we may live together

In tranquillity and safety.

Oh, how deeply I have missed you!

Each time my feet touch your soil,

My soul returns to my body,

And my heart trembles with joy.