I feel a mix of things, excitement, trepidation, sadness, fear, joy. It's only natural. And the more you think about it, the bigger it grows in your head, and the more emotions you are able to allot it. It will be all right because it must be all right, I have that faith. It is not even that I am sad about the things I will leave behind. I may not even miss them when I am away. But for now I feel a great love for all that I shall leave behind. It's a joyous feeling,really. 

The last day

This winter, beyond the home and forest

Rinsing off the fatigue and the grime

Where the unknown makes its own solitude

I have promised, I must visit once

Neera

A silence had wanted - to touch another stillness

They went in opposite directions

Never even met in this lifetime

This

i know this with surety, in a way that i have not known it before this. i dont want to go back, and I have to leave. I don't know why, I suppose I am unhappy there. I think I am, though I dont notice it every day. I keep myself busy, there are things that I enjoy, and I deal with life. I dont stop to ask too many questions. I am only noticing it now - I think I am realising that I am going back to a place where I am alone, although I have never minded being alone before, and I am returning for a little while, a few months before I step into the unknown. The unknown should be frightening but it seems to be much more appealing than this familiar. I know there are good things to come, there must be. This familiar has certainly given me a great deal but it has also taken away a lot from me. I dont want to lose my integrity. I asked for the newspaper and I began to read it until I realised that I dont actually care what is happening there. I dont want to catch up with the news I missed. It doesnt matter to me. It did once. I thought I was going back home. Now I don't think of it as home - I don't think of any place as home. And that is a strange, strange feeling. 

Love is a fragment of verse, the rest will never be written

From Neera

There is no exile for you from me or for me

From you

Come back, come back to the circle of my arms

Rumi

“The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.” 

― Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

From The Glance by Rumi

Being closer and closer is the desire 

of the body. Don't wish for union!

There's a closeness beyond that. Why

would God want a second God? Fall in

love in such a way that it frees you

from any connecting. Love is the soul's

light, the taste of morning, no me, no

we, no claim of being. These words

are the smoke the fire gives off as it

absolves its defects, as eyes in silence,

tears, face. Love cannot be said.

from Neera

Instead of opening the door, you could have said the time was wrong

You didn't, your mercy made the day golden, flowers

​​​​​Showered on my desire

 

You live impossibly far away now, take this distance further

Neera, don't you remember the scene by heaven's river?

In your light I learn how to love, 

In your beauty, how to make poems. 

You dance inside my chest,

Where no one sees you,

But sometimes I do,

And that sight becomes this art.

- Rumi

from 'A Thirsty Fish' by Rumi

I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.

(translated by Coleman Barks, from The Essential Rumi published by HarperCollins)

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of the things not meant for you.

- Buddha