Los Colores de mi Amor

Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle. ~ Benjamin Franklin I burn books and etch their words on the walls of my mind. I crave my reading with a ravenous hunger. I want to slow myself down to cherish the tastes of characters, styles and plots, but I'm unable to. Late at night, letters twirl around inside me. Abandoned phrases with orphaned paragraphs perform a sacrificial dance to a soundless music. A silent chuckle reverberates in my head, followed by a dry tear down my cheek. Together, they chase away the remnants of sleep as I accidentally knock the glass of water on the night-table over, spilling my dreams in a puddle on the floor. With the advent of dawn, they evanesce, leaving a fugue of bittersweet memories. The Frères Maristes taught me French very well and made me hate it too. I was barely six when the twisted priests drilled French in my head with a quill. They force-fed me francophone ink to obliterate what little Arabic I knew. They, however, couldn't t