Amer Malas | Fiction & Reflection

I came across Abdul Azeem Fanjan’s poem about love — the kind that transcends body, soul, even the word itself — and something in me recognized what he was naming.
Love that exists beyond its object. Love as a way of being, not just feeling.

“When I say I love you,I do not mean the body,nor the soul,nor desire,nor even love.
When I love you,I do not mean anything in particular.
Perhaps my love for youcan only be known through itself.
Perhaps love is freedom.”
— Abdul Azeem Fanjan

My response was
When I say I love you,
I do not mean you precisely.
I love to love.
I love the pulse of being
as it learns to open.

And in your eyes
that opening found its echo — 
a stillness that saw me back.

You are the page
where my hands stopped
in the book of love — 
the breath that turned ink into light.

You are the bud that became a branch
in the garden of my soul,
and the branch keeps growing — 
past endings,
past names — until it touches the sky.

And so,when I say I love you,
I am saying
we have become love itself.

I think this is what Fanjan meant when he said love can only be known through itself.
Not possession. Not even completion.
Just two people who, for a moment, became an opening.
And that opening becomes a unique being on its one that doesn’t compare to anything else in this world.
The branch keeps growing toward the sky.

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Originally published on Medium · Witnessing Moments