When Love Was a Temple Whisper

I walk like a pilgrim on a road where spring once stopped to pray,
My hair is turning ash, the way evening melts into smoke.

Childhood still rings inside me like thin glass in old corridors,
Hunger-small fingers once counting stars instead of coins.

Time ground my days like grain beneath a patient stone,
Leaving only echoes sewn into long, dust-breathing roads.

She was my first dawn, untouched by noise or doubt,
A jasmine prayer rising from the silence of my youth.

In her eyes, love felt holy, like twin oil lamps sharing breath,
A sacred hush where even desire learned how to kneel.

When someone calls, “Shall I pour the old gruel?” the past dissolves,
And I drift unseen, a soft cloud children run through.