What is it to love

Is it your mothball-scented gaze,
burdened with the weight of years?

Is it the reckless touch of your hands,
daring to face crucifixion?

Is it the dance upon the shuddering skin,
of a delicate frequency flowing from your inner depths?

Or, is it to deny the entire universe,
and become imprisoned in an unlockable drunkness of the mind?

Is it to melt away from within,
behind unbidden, ill-fitting masks?

Is it to unleash your most ineffable screams of “enough,”
and retreat into your own obscurity?

Is it to exist with your true essence, if only briefly,
in a weary yet tranquil nothingness,
within the drunkness of a bottomless well?

Is it to cry out to the whole world,
spilling onto a poem or a canvas?

Is it to still endure among those who say “in vain, all in vain,”
and to scatter endlessly, even if reduced to ash?

Is it to cling, involuntarily, to undeserving flesh?

With every touch,
with every inhalation of a scent,
is it to search for age zero?

And when your existence departs into desolation one day,
is it the breath of the pavements you left behind in trust?

Written by Aşur Horoz