# A Letter to the Sun

- Writer: سهى نعيمه
- Published: 2021-02-18
- Topic: Personal Experiences
- URL: https://mirdad.app/articles/568/A-Letter-to-the-Sun
- Source: Mirdad (mirdad.app), an Arabic writing and reading platform. Every piece is reviewed by an editor before it is published.

**THE NEW YORKER – Poem 

**

**May 1993 

**

**Suha Naimy**

**A Letter to the Sun**

**Sitting alone
in my shell

**

**Surrounded with
walls, walls of ice,

**

**A candle light
is all I have

**

**To light my
face a rolling dice. **

**My candle
rhymes tempting dances 

**

**On the thick
walls of my cocoon. 

**

**Flames bend and
curve on my crannied fences 

**

**As I stand and
observe illusions of doom.  

**

**Are these my
candle or my thought reflections 

**

**Up on the
bricks of my dark dungeon?**

**Walls of ice
never melt,

**

**Thickening each
day,

**

**Closer to
death. 

**

**How long should
I sit in the shade? 

**

**How long shall
I watch the withering flame? 

**

**Is this all
what I am?  A shadow? 

**

**Do shadows
handcuff?  Do shadows cripple? 

**

**How can I
know?  An incredible riddle.

**

**Is knowledge
anything but a fainting idol? **

**The shell’s
animal anaesthetized,

**

**The sea around
hums with tide, 

**

**Ebb and flow is
the silence,

**

**Ebb and flow my
emotion,

**

**Ebb and flow is
existence. **

**What’s the sea
but a shadow of the moon? 

**

**What’s the
shell but a shadow of the sea? 

**

**What am I but a
shadow of the sun,

**

**Lost in a heap
of ghosts,

**

**Suffocating
from non-existence. **

**A letter to the
sun,

**

**No more broken
mirrors,

**

**Pleading
refletions, 

**

**No more
refractions. **

**A letter to the
sun,

**

**In search of my
personal identity,

**

**Let me be,

**

**Set me
free. **

**A letter to the
sun, 

**

**No more candle
lights,

**

**No more
reflections,

**

**Let me be the
light,

**

**Let me be the
sun. 

**

** **Suha Naimy