"A Relationship... Fragrant in Its Features"

By poet Dr. Essam Khalifa
From the poetry collection "A Relationship... Fragrant in Its Features"

In "A Relationship... Fragrant in Its Features," poet Dr. Essam Khalifa gives fragrance a life beyond the bottle. Perfume becomes a lover, a prisoner and a witness to fleeting encounters, before gradually turning into a companion of memory and exile, able to cross distances that the poet himself cannot.

From the woman who releases the fragrance, to the snow of Toronto, then to the Nile, the desert and jasmine, the poem moves between love, longing and homeland. Scent becomes a way of recovering what distance has taken away, and of preserving the people and places that remain alive within memory.

"A Relationship... Fragrant in Its Features"

It rises from the silent bottle,
clinging to the fingers of the beautiful woman.

A bottle has adorned its prison
with the deception of colors and names.

His beloved came to lift its cover,
and the silence of its glass turned into song.

Perfume takes the beautiful woman as a page,
drawing its poem upon the air.

Its elegance is told along the page of her neck,
in ways the eloquence of poets could never describe.

From exile's flirtation it spins its longing,
with a mastery that deceives the beholder's eyes.

It remains gazing through its narrow confines,
waiting for the maiden's melody.

When she touched the cold glass and sighed,
it rose before her like a radiant genie.

Perfume is bolder than the fog of my city,
a traveler beyond walls and storms.

It watches apparitions before they arrive
and records events and things.

How many encounters come to an end,
while their fragrance remains like history upon my coat.

Rejoice, solitude of the imprisoned perfume,
for I shall breathe the fragrance of my winter memories.

In Toronto's snow, I freeze my loneliness
so I may melt it in the Nile and the desert.

In the light of its sunrise and the joy of its nights,
and in the messages of children to their parents.

In a morsel that, despite its fading,
painted a smile upon the faces of the poor.

I came to it carrying the bitterness of a question
that only added to the abundance of my suffering:

"Will I cast off my exile upon its shores,
or will another exile be born from our meeting?"

I came to it like perfume, casting off my solitude,
melting the ice of its sands with my tears.

I grew weary of jasmine's heart and its confession,
for a beautiful woman who came to lift my cover.

I shall spread through the air when she embraces me,
as musk, as verse, and as the wine of endurance.

Take from me the elegance of my bottle,
and grant me the touch of "the dark-haired beauty."