How can I begin to tell you how much I miss you without using those three common words that can't even start to express the magnitude nor the depth of my emotions. How can I write in my own blood while wanting to revert its color. The color of blood is similar to "I miss you". It has been raped by writers and lovers constantly, ever since Cain and Abel. I want to be able to create a new alphabet that can simply stand in front of you without bowing. I want to use new metaphors that would erupt like volcanoes between the phrases of my readers' souls. Metaphors such as your absence is similar to eating salt straight from the shaker while thirst is devouring my tongue. Metaphors such as the lack of your presence is like being straddled behind the glass of my own senses.

— Malak El Halabi

I didn't sleep all night, thinking. I thought about you, about those puppy eyes you give me, when you fake your sadness to make me smile-- and that upper lip of yours that brings life to all of my senses. Furthermore, I thought about your laughter when you get tickled, and that soft mellow place near your arm pit that I wish could be knit into a pillow for me to hug all night long. Furthermore, I thought about your stomach, your soft and sensitive stomach, scared like a baby kitten under the pouring rain. And I remembered the feeling of protection that comes washing over me when I get a glimpse of it, the feeling of covering it with the layers of my very own skin. I remembered your head when it rests on my heart, a rock sheltering itself on the verdure of infinity. I remembered your silky black hair, and how I never imagined that hair curls so thin could twirl, in the way they do, the rigid core of my existence.

— Malak El Halabi

I learned by heart the lines of your face. I can draw them blindly on a water canvas. Your face in the middle of an inflamed argument. Your face in the middle of a mild one-- when you're at fault. Your face filled with rainbows of laughter. Your face filled with clouds of distress. Your face, fluttering, when I open you the door. Your face, agonizing, every time I stand waiting, for the elevator. Your face, eager, when you kiss me. Your face, surprised, when I lead you to bed. Your face in the middle of pain. Your face on the outskirts of pleasure. Your face, with a baffled look, when you wake up. Your face falling asleep, with total surrender. Your face the first night we met. Your face the last night we parted. I learned by heart the lines of your face. They all led me into hell. They all led me into heaven.

— Malak El Halabi

I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belem. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water. Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles.

— Malak El Halabi

I still smell your absence on my skin. It smells of insomnia and rusted key locks...

— Malak El Halabi

It was the moment I heard your laughter. The moment I heard us laughing, two cascades in the middle of a desert, careless and uninhibited.

— Malak El Halabi

I want to be the thought that takes your mind off the road and your hand off the steering wheel.

— Malak El Halabi

I watched you storm towards the restaurant door. It was a chilly December morning and the birds sitting on the high wires in the neighborhood refused to fly any longer.

— Malak El Halabi

Like a tenacious ivy, your presence clings onto the drab wall of my existence. Cling harder onto me love, like a blood sucking bed-bug who is never satiated.

— Malak El Halabi

No one made sense of the love they shared. They didn't get the hang of it either. But together, the clocks of winter stopped. And autumn's fallen leaves turned, swiftly, scarlet.

— Malak El Halabi