ROULA-MARIA DIB

Slow the pulse until it learns
the patience of rings, time written inward.
They were growing while empires rehearsed collapse.
They watched dyes bleed into water,
heard prayer ferment into air,
felt language lean against bark.

I speak to you from here—
you who carry the same mountain in your bones.
Each needle a compass
we were born already holding.
Each cone a promise
that return is not geography, but encounter.

Has the world, distracted for centuries,
suddenly remembered
how to bring us together?

We are each other.

Even in exile, the scent follows us–
in clothes folded too carefully,
in songs our mothers hum without translation.
Inside is the soft weeping of resin.
How strange, that strength should hurt.
That endurance should remember.

This is how the world re-enchants itself:
through coincidence that insists. Matter that speaks back.
Meetings older than memory.
It re-opens by allowing what we love
to look at us in return.
Wonder is devotion practiced slowly.

And so I write you
under their long regard—a child of sap and syntax,
trying to graft what is still becoming.
They do not forget.
Shade stretches across generations, offering shelter
to whatever dares
to stay open long enough
for meaning to touch back.

Roula-Maria Dib, PhD, is an award-winning scholar, poet, and editor whose work bridges literature, creative writing, Jungian psychology, and arts-based research. She is the founding director of the London Arts-Based Research Centre and Editor-in-Chief of Indelible, a literary and arts journal that fosters cross-disciplinary creative expression.
Her book Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020) was shortlisted for the International Association for Jungian Studies Book Awards, and her poetry collection Simply Being (Chiron Publications, 2021) has received critical acclaim. She is also a contributor to Patricia Leavy’s renowned Handbook of Arts-Based Research. Roula is an active curator of global academic and creative activities, having organized over 100 conferences and events. Through her Psychreative speaker series and international workshops, she continues to inspire dialogue between the humanities, the arts, and inner life.

(An Italian translation can be found here)

Photo: Liliana Fantini