“Inshallah”: If God Wishes!

You may see and not see

how I’m looking in your direction

out of your sight but focused on you –

how you turn, the way you speak

what catches your eyes

something that turns you on or off.

You may tug at my seat

or not look at me at all.

Bathed in worldly illusions

I may be just be one of the many

or among many ‘the one’

To talk would be to connect…

Do you despise being tangled

in my meticulously woven webs?

In your Koran, my Gita

who refuses to let us talk? No one.

It isn’t religion that forbids

It is the walls within us…

The cowardly fright of growing closer

makes the walls harder to break.

“Why am I clumsy?”

My rags of misdemeanor

so contrast your mannerly opulence!

I drop things; I drop low

to come up in your eyes

The eyes that you cover

with goggles of “Inshallah” –

if God wishes we will talk,

we’ll walk the alley from acquaintance to friendship

we’ll be bound by cords of knowledge and feelings.

It isn’t love for I don’t know you enough

It isn’t an infatuation because that’s a small word

incapable of containing, tending to overflow

when filled with the feelings I have for you

For the way you look

sometimes in my direction

Just a glance that I could have misdirected

but not misjudged.

For there is something which makes me suspect

that you want to know me

or someone else!