12/21/2025
Happy Yalda Night :) This painting, is still one of my favourites I have done:)
I wrote this poem to go with it. Hope you enjoy.
Tonight, the earth inhales
and holds its breath.
The longest dark
presses its palm against the window,
asking to be remembered.
We light candles not to defeat the night
but to sit beside it,
to say: we see you.
In Persian homes,
pomegranates split open like small red suns,
each seed a promise whispered through generations:
This will pass.
So will this.
Poems are unfolded,
Hafez speaking across centuries,
ink still warm with faith
that language can outlast fear.
Somewhere else,
under another sky,
a different table waits,
evergreens breathing resin and hope,
fires stitched into hearths,
stories told because winter demands them.
Different names.
Same instinct.
To gather.
To eat sweetness against the cold.
To remember that light is not gone,
only turning inward,
learning patience.
The solstice does not rush.
It teaches us this quiet miracle:
that from the deepest dark
the days begin,
almost imperceptibly,
to return.
Tonight is not about triumph.
It is about trust.
That the sun remembers us.
That warmth is only resting.
That love, like light,
moves in cycles,
and always finds its way back.
So we stay awake a little longer.
We crack seeds.
We share verses.
We lean closer to one another
and say, without saying it:
We have survived this before.
We will do it again.
