The Poem of the Return

What is this body but a vessel — and what is the soul but a traveller who has forgotten it was always on its way home?

On Belonging

The Qur'an speaks of the soul's origin in a way that most of us have heard but rarely stopped to feel: "We belong to Allah and to Him we return" (2:156). This is recited at grief, at loss. But perhaps it was always meant for ordinary afternoons too. The soul carries an orientation it did not choose and cannot fully explain. We are restless in ways that comfort cannot resolve, because the restlessness is not a problem to be solved. It is a signal.

"To Allah we belong, and to Him we return." — Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:156

The Poem

What is this body but a transient shell,
a vessel for the soul, a tale to tell?
In the realm of flesh we wander far,
yet always drawn to what we are.

Death is but a door, a threshold crossed,
where nothing real is truly lost —
a return to the source where we began,
before the world, before the plan.

So let the heart not cling too tight
to what was always borrowed light.
The soul knows what the mind forgets:
the way home has no regrets.

A Reflection on the Verse

This poem was written as a meditation on Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 and the understanding that the soul's journey is not random. The body passes. The moment passes. The soul, if it has faced the right direction, arrives at what it was always moving toward.

Poetry is not proof. It is an attempt to say what prose cannot hold. If one line landed — sit with that line. That is enough.