Pointless
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Cyprus is too small for most dreams. That is what we say to console ourselves when someone’s talent starts to outgrow the island’s patience. But every now and then you meet a person who insists on stretching the limits of what is possible here. A few years ago, for me, that person was a poet.
He never introduced himself as such. It was simply obvious. The way he spoke, the way he paused, the way he could hold a sentence the way others hold their breath.
He was trying to become a writer in a place where even writers wonder why they bother. He kept submitting, kept editing, kept handing out slivers of his inner life to audiences who were often too distracted to notice. I admired him for that persistence, but I didn’t understand the source of it until he told me about her.
He had been heartbroken when we met. Not in the dramatic sense, but in the quiet, persistent way that becomes part of a person’s pulse. He let me walk with him through that grief. I remember thinking that only a poet could grieve that thoroughly. He didn’t fight the heartbreak. He didn’t try to skip stages. He studied them. Mourned with intention. Loved with intention. His devotion was almost overwhelming. I wondered if this was what doomed people to lifelong longing, the inability to stop feeling so much.
Then, one day, she came back.
Simply returned, as if the tide had changed direction and no one thought to warn the sea. And I caught myself asking a question that has lingered with me ever since. Did she come back because he refused to let go, or did she return because he honoured the loss so deeply that it created a path back to him?
Was it persistence? Was it love? Or was it something uniquely poetic, the trait that refuses to let anything end unless it is transformed first?
That is when Björk’s quote slipped into my mind, the one I always found funny. “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.” The line feels mischievous, but the truth in it is sharper. Poets lie all the time. They lie so they can tell a deeper truth. They exaggerate heartbreak so they can understand its anatomy. They romanticise persistence so they can survive the days when giving up would be easier.
But there is another possibility, the one I learned from him. Sometimes the poet is not lying. Sometimes the world really does bend toward those who feel boldly enough. Sometimes insisting that love matters is not delusion but a kind of quiet craftsmanship.
We often talk about Cyprus as a place that limits you, yet I have seen people create entire universes from small streets and a stubborn sense of purpose. He is still trying to make it as a writer. He still feels everything too much. And yet, I no longer see that as a flaw. If anything, his way of moving through the world has become a reminder that sensitivity is not something to outgrow. It is something to cultivate.
He taught me that giving up on love is the one thing we should be most suspicious of. That heartbreak is not proof of failure. That returning to a dream is not always an accident.