sometimes i get so frustrated at myself because i pretend i’m tough and fierce and that i always leave bad things behind but in reality, i don’t walk away from anything not until it’s wrung me dry and left me empty and hurting and i so wish that i was the girl that people seem to think i am but i’m not, i’m just stupidly soft to my own detriment and i love people who don’t really deserve or want it and i hope that in the future i’ll grow into who i want to be

‘Girls like you’ your mother says ‘are going to be disappointed a lot.’

She’s chopping coriander so fast that her hand is a blur
and you’re 12 and you’re standing
like a tremble, grubby knees and tear stained cheeks,
an offering in front of her
‘Why?’ Your voice is a quiet shake.
She puts the knife down and calls your name,
she holds your face in her wet hands,
you don’t flinch because this
is what love looks like
she kisses your forehead like forgiveness
‘because you mean what you say,
you think other people are the same.’
She tells you that she spent four years
trying to learn their language
but people ask how you are
and walk away before you can tell them.
‘I’d rather be silent.’ She says.
‘At least being quiet is honest.’
You’ll come home seven years later
wearing your heart like a bruise
on the inside of your sleeve
‘mama,’ you’ll say, voice like a thunder crack
‘he said he loved me, and I believed him,
I shouldn’t have,
I think that he lied.’
She’ll be older then, but she’ll kiss you
just as tender, just as birdlike.
‘Is it my fault?’ You’ll ask.
She is half lioness, half woman. She is all roar.
‘Listen to me’ she calls you her soul again.
She says it in your language so you know
that she means it.
‘You are so infinitely tender,’ she takes the frown
of your face in her hands and holds it carefully
‘People will not always know what to do with that.
You can’t ever be sorry for the way you loved,
You can’t be sorry for who you loved.
Don’t ever let them bend you backwards
don’t let them make you hard or bitter.’
Her voice turns into a growl
‘You did not get this from me.
Somewhere inside of you there is rain.
Somewhere in your stomach,
something beautiful is growing
and it is infinite.
Don’t you let them try and take that from you,
you are open and you are a flood,
someday someone is going to want to die in you.’

unrequited love

So what do I know about this? Simple. It makes you wanna take your heart out, stab it three or a hundred times and put it back inside you and hope that you won’t feel a thing anymore. That’s what it’s like. At first you think you’ll be fine because you’re doing it for love. You tried to be patient and wait and wait and wait as if you were waiting for a train you know that is coming. Except this time, there’s no train. It’s just an old dusty train station of silence and darkness. Everything in the beginning was wonderful.
Then your efforts start to pour in. You try to show your love more and more each day. You put on your best smile to show that you are fine with what you’re doing. You don’t really expect for something in return. Everyday it would be like that. You do things and then at the end of the day, you’re contented because the one you love feels better. You don’t really think of yourself.
Time passes by then you get to feel the exhaustion. Maybe it’s because of the routine of you showing your love without getting a little bit of appreciation. Of course, you weren’t doing it for anything in exchange but then you’re starting to feel empty. It’s like the love in your heart for yourself is already drained because of what you’re trying to give. That’s the time when you will realize how things will get painful the next days.
Then came the realization that the love you gave will never be the same thing you will receive. Again, you will remind yourself that you never did it for something in return but of course, you will ask yourself, “I deserve to be loved back, right?” The answer is yes. You know that. The sad part is you know that the one you love isn’t the one who can love you the same way. So everything you did from day one until that day will come rushing to your mind. You will question yourself why didn’t you leave a little love for yourself. All you did was love and love and love but still, you didn’t get to be loved back.
That’s the moment when all you want to is stab your heart so you won’t feel a thing anymore. It’s like your drowning in the water but also dehydrated. It just hurts that it kills you. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back in return is already bad but you know what is the worst? You forgot to love yourself.
I guess that’s what unrequited love is. You forget about yourself in the process of loving someone too much.

Marry your best friend.

Marry someone who you wouldn’t mind waking up to every day for the rest of forever.
 The one who makes you fucking glad to be alive. Who makes you feel like your heart has a huge goofy smile on its face. Don’t settle.
Marry someone who drives you crazy. The one who frustrates you. Marry the one you don’t mind fighting with, because they will not be stuck up or awkward about it. Don’t marry someone who gives their ego more importance, than they give you.
Marry someone who you can check other people out with. The one who you turn to when your world comes undone. The one whose shoulder you want at 4 AM because “nothing seems to work out”. The one you want at 2 PM because you hate eating your food alone.
Marry someone who knows how much coffee you need in the morning to be fully awake. The one who knows you are not a morning person.
Marry someone you can imagine yourself spending not just Friday nights but also Sunday afternoons with. The one you can see yourself with in the future…. maybe twenty or twenty five years down the line. The one who can take your sadness away in that one hug.
Marry someone who makes you the best version of yourself. The one who believes in you, even when you don’t. The one who stands by you, through thick and thin.
Marry someone you can’t imagine your life without.
Marry the one you are insanely in love with. And the one who is insanely in love with you.
Marry the one who knows what you want to say, when you’re too tired to say it with words. The one you can spend comfortable silences with from time to time.
Marry the one you can imagine yourself going on long road trips with.
Marry your soulmate. Marry your best friend.

Your 20’s are your ‘selfish’ years. It’s a decade to immerse yourself in every single thing possible. Be selfish with your time, and all the aspects of you. Tinker with shit, travel, explore, love a lot, love a little, and never touch the ground.

Asking too much

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with
Tell me why you loved them,
then tell me why they loved you
Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through
Tell me what the word “home” means to you
And tell me in a way that I’ll know your mothers name
just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8
See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate
And if that day still trembles beneath your bones
Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain
or bounce in the bellies of snow?
And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree
to build your snowman arms?
Or would you leave the snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree?
And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you
because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek?
Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?
Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad,
even if it makes your lover mad?
Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion
or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?
See, I wanna know what you think of your first name
And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mothers joy when she spoke it for the very first time
I want you tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.
Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.
Tell me—knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school.
If you were walking by a chemical plant, where smoke stacks
were filling the sky with dark, black clouds, would you holler, “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would whisper,
“That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy”?
Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?
Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?
And if you don’t believe in miracles,
tell me, how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?
See, I wanna know if you believe in any god,
or if you believe in many gods.
Or better yet, what gods believe in you.
And for all the times you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you’ve asked come true?
And if they didn’t did you feel denied?
And if you felt denied, denied by who?
I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good
I wanna know what you see in the mirror on a day a day you’re feeling bad
I wanna know the first person who ever taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass
If you ever reach enlightenment, will you remember how to laugh?
Have you ever been a song?
Would you think less of me if I told you I have lived my entire life a little off key
and I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry
I just plagiarized the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence
Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?
And if you do I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar.
See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living
I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving.
And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.
I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds
And if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon
that if you wanted to you could pop—but you never would because you’d never want it to stop
If a tree fell in the forest, and you were the only one there to hear it,
if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist
or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?
And lastly, let me ask you this:
if you and I went for a walk, and the entire walk we didn’t talk,
do you think eventually we’d kiss?
No way.
That’s asking too much
—after all, this is only our first date.