Can You Love A Sad Girl?

Can you love a sad girl? I mean maybe you can but do you really know how? It’s easy to love her all smiling, positive and supportive. When she talks about the sun and moon and stars, how they shine and how beautiful they are. When she talks about the beautiful colour of the ocean and the limitless sky, the chirping birds and wet grass. But that’s not really her. Deep inside, in all realness, she’s just a sad girl.

Would you know how to love her still when she decides to stop pretending? When she decides to take off that mask and leave it hanging at the door for good. When she decides it’s okay not to be okay. When she decides it’s okay to be that way. When she decides there is no other way she’d rather be. Would you still love her? I mean would you know how to love her? Would you be able to stand the melancholy in her eyes and her half hearted smile?

Love her not only when she talks about the colours of the ocean but the darkness in its depth- when the fears take over.

Love her not only when she talks about the limitless blue sky but the storm that accompanies it- the hurricane of her insecurities.

Love her not only when she talks about sun moon and the stars but when she’s a little too literally a black hole herself. A galaxy within a galaxy- a confusing state of complicated mess.

Love her when the stars in her eyes lose their shine, when you see her eyes hazy with fog and dew drops. When she can’t see anything else, make her see you. Let her know that you are still here. And that you’ll always be no matter what.

Love her like the sunset; you know it will disappear but you admire it nonetheless for as long as it lasts. Love her fiercely like the dying light of the orange sun; warm and burning.

Because it’s easy to love a girl that smiles. Anybody can do that for you. She will know your worth when you still keep loving her. Actually love her more, much more than before, especially when her smile has faded among the deathly hollows of her sorrow.

So tell me can you love a sad girl ? Do you know how?

(Daily post: Structure,  educate,  priceless, Finite, waiting ) 

If Love Is Pain Then Darling, Let’s Hurt Tonight

She holds my heart in her hands and we sit to talk. I need to feel warm and she needs to feel safe. We are quiet at the moment but stars speak. Her eyes glisten like emeralds as she flips and turns my heart in her hands carefully examining it. And I’m surprised how there isn’t even one moment of fear that crosses my mind that she might drop it. Because I know with surety she won’t.

I have never been as sure about anything in my life as I am about her. I am actually glad she has my heart in her hands because I fear it’s her touch that keeps it beating. Without her love, there will be just colourless voids and a heart that keeps forgetting to beat.

So we sat to talk. We should have talked. We could have talked. But we didn’t. Instead we just lay together staring into infinite space that looked nothing less than pure magic. I wanted her to tell me things, anything. Lot of things. Everything. Just hear her speak. But her eyes were too loud for me to hear anything else at that moment. So I stared at her while she stared at the stars.

I didn’t want us to be mere accident like something that just happens one day unexpectedly. I wanted us to be on purpose- that just has to be for a reason. I wanted to love her on purpose and not like an accident.

She was a calm whisper in a world that was too loud. And although she was a chaos herself, I knew she could calm the storm within me.

She broke her eye contact with the stars and looked at me. And all it took was flash of a second, for me to know; I’d be a fool to let her go. Because she needed me as much as I needed her. And together, we were going to heal and glue back together our broken pieces.

It has always been her and me.

All those empty cervixes inside us that echoed with scars that still bled and thunders that still ripped us apart from time to time. It has always been her and me. And we, together, were going to heal.

Hence, she holds my heart in her hands to keep it beating, while I hold her close so she can breathe easy. I’m never leaving her side nor she needs to fall because she’s already safe in my arms. She doesn’t need to break herself anymore to prove anything.

I’m sure now, it has always been; her and me. And there is no way I’d rather have it be.

(Daily post: Corner, magnetic, homage, rhyme, critical )

Pain, Love and Magic

I looked at her as a tide rose in her eyes. She quickly looked down at her hands trying to hide it. I called her by name, holding her chin between my fingers.

She lifted up her head but her eyes betrayed her this time and tears came running down her cheeks. Like a flood which had been kept blocked for far too long, finally broke looking for its much awaited escape. Her tears spilling like rain drops on the palm of my hands.

It hit me, in the deepest part of my chest. Like her soul was being sliced open right in front of my eyes.

And In that moment, I wanted, I needed magic to exist. I wanted to let her know that happiness existed. I wanted her to know happiness and nothing else. For her to taste it on her tongue and breathe it in like air. I wanted her to smile at me with the laugh that sounded nothing less than poetry. To look at me with those bright eyes that made my stomach unfurl.

God, I couldn’t see her like that. She didn’t deserve this. Why did she have to suffer so much? In that moment in time, I had never wanted anything more in my life than for magic to exist.

I wanted, I needed her to know that I loved her. With all my heart and every ounce of strength, I would love her. Every second, every minute, every hour of the day. Till the end of times, I would love her. Till all she would know is my love. Till all that consumed her would be my love and not sadness, not pain, not suffering.

I wanted her to know I would love her even if the stars stopped shinning or the moon went dark or the sun lost it warmth. I would love her still…. with all my heart. Always.

(Daily post: Corner, Shiny, Solitary, Unfurl, )

Fire vs Men

She loved starting fires. Whether it was in the belly of lost men in pub at 2am or gentlemen in the park at 2pm. All she knew was of starting fires.

She was wilderness, an inhabitable Chappell. That played unheard choirs with symphonies that told stories of all those who once visited her. She left a trail of flame behind her every time she walked away from them. Her glow was a warmth those men couldn’t resist. Even though treading too close to her meant getting a burn or two but she loved starting fires and those men loved to be set ablaze. It was more or less a mutual consent. Except of course fire also means inevitable ashes. And it was mostly always her who was slowly being reduced to one. Her footsteps were an amalgam of her ashes; pieces of her that once were and spark; pieces that still held potential. You could say she was life and death both in one.

For those men, she was just a distraction from their old boring routines. Someone who made their stagnant hearts beat a little faster in the night and made them feel more than what their sorry lives made them feel in the morning. She resurrected them from mediocrities, made them feel alive in those moments in her embrace and company. She was never more than a woman who satiated their wildest fantasies and just that.

She too liked the way she made them feel. She was someone they would always remember, like a burn marred into their memory forever but never the one to spend the rest of their lives with. It was only fair, a fire like hers was never meant to be contained. A fire if kept too long would only incinerate and devour the one keeping her captive.

She was a flame meant to spread like wildfire; Velocious, devastating and resistant.
Like a tenacious unwavering inferno, that only knew of rage and annihilation.
Swallowing everything that came her way like smoke down the windpipe of an addict.

All she knew of was starting fires. And there is only so much fire those frightened men could take before they ran for the hills. Their coward faces hid under the mask of unproved bravery. She could only laugh at their stories. Those men….only used her as a lighter to ignite their fire, only to end up leaving her to melt other candles. That’s all they could do. Their cowardliness never allowed them to be anything more than that.

They were just scared gutless boys trapped under the skin of manlihood that asked of them nothing more than words and no action. But they carried the mark of bravery like they had earned it, with their puffed up chests pointing towards the sky dripping with smugness and arrogance. Their fragile egos tender and at-stake with everything said against their will. Their pride as easily bruised as their spineless existence- Condescending and conceited.

A mark of bravery they owned like a heirloom but never earned, not even close. So it was only fair when they ran the other way on the sight of fire which threatened their superiority. They were never the ones to fight in the battle field but the ones to flee from it at the first sign of danger and gunfire. Ducking their heads like nothing will ever hurt them if they didn’t look and kept walking. Those men only knew how to save themselves and they were good at it.

Nobody really knew the potential her fire contained. She might have burned a man or two but she scalded herself just the same. Her fire only flamed higher and higher until it reached the blue sky and made it red. Until the sky too caught her fire and rained flames.

(Daily post: Elemental, Prickle)

To Be Loved Like A Poet Loves its Poem.

She will touch you with fingers so cold you will wonder why ice wasn’t named after her yet she will set your skin ablaze. She will look at you like art piece. Analyze every crease on your face when you laugh and every grimace when something displeases you.

She will look at you like a path that keeps unfolding and she’s treading blind. Oblivious of what’s to come but woefully expectant of what’s ahead. She will explore you. She will show you what’s its like to be loved as a poet loves its poem.
And believe me, she will love you like a poem.
She’s the type to turn you into poetry.

She will see into your eyes and imagine a thousand stars bursting; into dreams that are made up of all that you are, all that you were and all that you are suppose to be. She will consider you a galaxy with shooting stars and meteor showers.

You will tell her things and she will listen to you. And she will stare at you until you tell her how her gaze is so unnerving. But she’s only looking at you like words that are left unsaid because nobody has been courageous enough to write them down on paper yet. Because those are the words not everybody can imagine writing every day.

So she will love you like a poet but you will have to love her back like a poem; gently, kindly and courageously. For a broken heart might shoot ink into her veins but it will kill a part of her, that she will never be able to recover again.

People like her lose their pieces one by one until one day they find themselves empty. After all there is a reason, why poets die young.

(Daily post: Texture, Shimmer, Amble, )

A Thousand Deaths

She was dying a thousand deaths and I couldn’t save her from the carnage taking place right in front of me. I could see her struggle to breathe with every gasp of air that felt as thick as molten lava slipping down her throat. And she had no other option but to chug it. Let it burn holes through her windpipe with every intake.

The pain though, was in her eyes. It was an avalanche and I could see her asphyxiate under it. There was a torrent of undiluted anguish- as crude and concentrated as venom. And I could see how with every thump of her heart beat, it was being pushed down her veins and into her arteries. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Much deeper than I could ever manage to reach.

I could do nothing but sit there and watch that pain gush out of her system like flood, as an outpouring flux engulfing me. If only she didn’t have to die a thousand deaths in front of me. If only our love wasn’t a tragedy. If only saving her was as easy as holding her hand at this very moment. If only, if only, if only.

If only she would lift up her head and see me looking at her. She would understand, how somethings are not meant to be fixed. Somethings are better left broken. Because sometimes, broken is beautiful and so is she.

_______________________

Side note: This post is dedicated to everyone who has ever suffered from loss. For anyone who has known grief. For anyone who knows what it’s like to lose someone you love. Whether the loss was physical in the form of death or an emotional/metaphorical loss. I see your pain and I know how it feels❤️

(Daily post: Missing, New Horizon)

Jaan-E-Maan

‘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 you ‘jaan’
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.’

   – “Jaan-E-Maan” by Azra Tabassum
(via 5000letters.tumblr.com)

(Jaan-E-Maan means “My Dear” in Persian and “Darling” in Urdu language.)

(Daily Post: Vanish, Sacred )

We Bleed (To Transform)

(Transmogrify)

I don’t know what it is about blood. We claim it’s a bad thing yet we can’t stop bleeding. We let others wound us over and over again until gash is a foot deep into our soul. Sometimes we wound others and get wounded in the process.

We clutch tightly to barbed wires of emotional attachments and walk on the burning coals of expectations. And by the end of it when we fall on the ground profusely gushing and wounded to our core, we make promises to ourselves; never again. But as we all know, promises are made to be broken.

The wound is by now infected because you didn’t take care of it well. You didn’t suture it on time and you didn’t put the bandage when you should have. You just let it be; as a reminder of all the things you loved that ruined you.

We fall back onto bed made of thorns of disappointment, exhausted. And bleed some more. We bleed until we can’t. We ache until every muscle in our body refuses to ache anymore. We suffer until pain itself screams in pain. Until the infection has spread onto every small vein and down to our very bones. Until we find ourselves disintegrating- crumbling, decaying, withering.

But,
How else could we have become anew,
If we had not first become ashes?