The One You Lose Your Heart To

Someday you’ll meet her. You’ll immediately know she’s different. The way she walks with humility. The way she dresses decently. The way her eyes shine with absolute innocence and sheer love. The way she doesn’t engage in vain talks and useless arguments. The way she carries herself with dignity. How she’s kind. Always so kind. How she’s almost always smiling and making others smile. Her goodness towards others will make you want to be good to her. She’ll change you without trying. Someday you’ll meet her and hopelessly fall in love.

To Not Break A Heart

A few kinds words
& a genuine smile
A silent presence
Just so she knows everything's alright
A little honest gesture
& a little care
Just so not everyone is in despair
It doesn't take too much
To not break a heart
Just a little effort
On your part
But people are selfish
& thoughtless & cruel
Don't give a thought
Before they change the rules
Now you don't know the game
Or how to play
& there on the bedroom floor
Your feelings lay
How much effort does it really take
To not break a heart, to promises not fake?

Making love an ugly affair
Giving them pain too hard to bear
People like you are to be blamed
For every heart that doesn't believe
For every scar that just doesn't heal
How much effort does it really take
To not break a heart, to not give them that ache?

No love was demanded
But you said love it was
So why now for her misery
Your love is the cause?
It's sad, it's terrible
How people break people
It's then you realize how helplessly you're crippled
& you're left alone to wonder
If you were just his amuse
It's sad, it's terrible
How love is the excuse
Every part of you hurts
But no sound is heard
That is how a heart breaks
That's how much it hurts...

What Love Is

 

      & if someday, for some reason you can't love me anymore...I will only smile & thank you for all the times that you did cause I know people fall out of love just like they fall in it & I know the most beautiful flowers wither & are thrown away & I know seasons change & nothing remains the same...but I'm still not sure how that happens because when I look at you, I only see the person I want to be around for the rest of my life but someday when you don't feel the same, I'll only smile and let you go, find someone in who's eyes you see your tomorrow like I saw mine in yours. I'll wish you the best cause that's what you wish for people you love, even when they destroy you, you wish for them to find peace in the wake of your destruction, for them to find hope while you search for reasons...
          & if someday you want to leave, I'll only smile & say goodbye. I'll only smile and let my heart cry...

Need You Now

I've had a bad day at work. I'm tired. The anxiety is overwhelming. She turns away and sleeps. She doesn't spring up and comfort me like you used to. She doesn't hold my face and look into my eyes and say it'll be okay. She doesn't give me her arms to loose myself into. She doesn't give me her lap to rest my head on. She doesn't give me her love like you did. When I told you she's nothing like you, I meant it.

Sadness Isn't Beautiful But It Can Be Used Beautifully

Some of us are born writers...some of us become it, in hopes of giving someone hope...or becoming it for somebody. In hopes of, somehow giving words to their feelings. In hopes of finding someone who understands it, just so they know they're not alone. In hopes that someday someone will read between the lines and discover everything you've been trying to hide. Some of us aren't even poets, some of us are just sad, looking for something to desperately hold on to.  They use pieces of their broken hearts and memories of their shattered dreams and moments of their incompletely complete tales, in their rhymes. Beautiful pieces standing on a broken ground, which no one notices...because sadness is ugly, sadness is unwanted but the outcome of it can be breathtakingly beautiful, pure and relatable. Sadness isn't beautiful. Ask someone who has lost something dear. They'd tell you. They'd tell you there's nothing poetic about having your heart broken. Its sad. Its terrible. You need to fight. And this is how some people do it. Trying to beautify the ugly phase of their existence. The only phase you loved and hated something so fiercely. Its sad, isn't it, that someone can hurt you so much that you have to write about it? And the greatest irony is that they still wouldn't get it. Your rhymes can spell their names and your story can paint their face and they'd still be oblivious. They wouldn't know. They won't know about your diary that has stains of your tears when you created that rhyme about them. They wouldn't know all the crossed out lines and the little hearts you doodled all over the page. They wouldn't know how your hands shivered and the writing was almost unrecognizable, except that it was about them...so you'd never forget what you wrote. They won't know how you spend hours staring at their picture trying to create a rhyme as beautiful as them. They wouldn't know how you struggled to describe how that angelic face could create such a damage. They wouldn't know how you stayed up all night crying just to erase it all. They will never get your words. They will never understand your rhymes, cause if they did you wouldn't be here scribbling words trying to weave it in some way that they'd understand...you wouldn't be a writer. Write love, write. Let your pen bleed love. Maybe someday, years from now you'll be able to see the beauty in your writings without feeling the pain. Maybe someday this sadness will just be a faded memory. Sadness isn't beautiful...but souls like yours make it.

You're nothing less than beautiful.

Don't let them define you. Don't let them know the way to your sadness. Don't EVER give them the key to your happiness. Don't tell them you see emptiness when they see the color of his eyes. Don't tell them you notice the chapped lips damaged trying to hold back tears where they see her smile. Don't tell them you see stories in faces. They wouldn't understand. They wouldn't know the withered tales about the withered roses between diares which are so much more than a book mark. They are a mark in their lives, a begining that ended. An end that remains. Tell them love is pain and they'll label you weak. Don't listen to them. Don't apologize for feeling too much in a world that doesn't feel. They'll romanticize love and write poems about heart break. They'll take pieces of your pain and use it in their rhymes without feeling it. The world will know. But they won't feel it. Ask them if the sky ever cries because of the destruction we cause? Ask them what leads the birds home every night? Ask them if love is deeper than the ocean? Ask them if it is okay to fall? Ask them if the pain ever fades? Don't wait for the answers. Find them love. Find them.

Happy Realization Fickle-Head

She is wearing the dress you never liked but my god she looks beautiful with that smile on her face. The smile you never noticed because you were seldom the reason for it. She is sitting on a table away from yours and she isn't tapping her feet on the ground out of nervousness when the guy across from her touches her hand. She gets up and leaves with him without even giving a glance at your direction & it hits you this time. He took her away while you were taking her for granted. She puts her head on his shoulders & you want to break it. Her cheeks are red from laughing too much & her eyes look so much lighter in shade & she looks nothing like she did with you...she looks happy.

It Never Ends

I look to my side, her body peacefully rising & falling. She looks young, so young. her fingers curled into a fist like a newborn's, chubby & soft. I trace her jawline with the tip of my fingers. She stifles & I cup her face in my hands. She moves & rests her face in my hands comfortably & smiles, her eyes lazily meeting mine. Her eyes, the shade of honey, look soft & liquidy, deep. I stare at her with closed eyes for what seems like forever. I do not want to open them. She'd disappear. I know she'd disappear. She always does.

Solution

& sometimes life gives you questions, questions you don't understand, questions that leave you speech-less, confused, empty. But eventually...eventually Allah shows you the answers, answers you never thought of, solutions your human mind could never come up with. Amidst the confusion, the chaos, just put your head on the ground. Cry to Him, feel His mercy fill up your heart. You do not know what to say & its okay, its okay cause He understands, He always understands.

-Bushra Shaikh

The Star & The Face Away From The Crowd

& I miss you...a little too much... little too often...& I can't do anything about it. You're gone. You wanted to leave. & I couldn't hold you back. I wanted to. But you can't hold people. You can't put them in a box. You can't make them stay. But I wish you did. But I guess it was time. It was time for you to go. I guess I forgot that you were a star & I was the crowd & we couldn't really share a common ground. I guess we weren't supposed to be what we were. I was the crowd, not the crowd following you & screaming 'I love yous'. I was the face away from that crowd, away from you, watching you from a distance, wondering if you were too tired to smile, wondering if you liked the lights flashing on your face, wondering if you slept well last night. Never saying a thing, just wondering & praying. Praying that you were okay, wherever you are, praying that I stop wondering about you or you start wondering...about me, just a little maybe somedays when you're tired and you want to laugh. I hope you think of our pointless talks & how I'm never out of words. I just hope you think of me. A little.
I don't know what my life brings tomorrow or the day after. But...but I hope someday, even if it is years from now, we cross paths & I hope you decide to stay.

Full of Emptiness

& you feel empty, the kind of empty that leaves no space for any emotion.  You could watch a filthy massacre and not blink an eye, you don't feel a thing, you just wanna die.  Its funny how unaffected, how something bordering the word 'invincible' could define you now. Its funny how a human can change you, how they can change your life, your heart into an irreparable mass of shattered dreams held together with broken promises and countless lies & its funny how they take everything away from you...even yourself & its funny how you just watch helplessly, funny how you can do nothing for yourself & its funny how you still survive as that empty life-less wreckage.  

Damage

He never really spoke to anyone and seldom smiled. One day, as he was sitting at his usual empty table at the cafeteria, she came along and took a seat opposite to him. He looked up at her, confused.
"So, what's your story?", she asked out of no where.
"Excuse me?", he said, taken aback.
"Something is hurting inside of you. That's why you need the drinks and cigarettes and music turned on so loud that you can't think!"
"Why would you be interested?"
"Doesn't a little damage make everything more interesting?", she laughed without humor in those pale green eyes and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. That's when the sleeve of her hoody slipped back a little. That's when he saw it. The scars. The damage.

That Kind Of Love

But what do you know about the love that gives but never demands? The one where he listens to her cry at 3 a.m. because the guy she loved broke her heart, not realizing she was breaking his. The one where she smiles at his stories about the girl who stole his heart, wondering if he had any idea how he had stole hers' years ago. The one where the other person's happiness matters more than your own. The one that gives and gives and is never void. The one that is satisfied with her smile. The one that is worried with his frown. The one where she never notices him because her eyes are still blurry from the tears and memories of her first love. The one where she encourages him to propose the girl he talks about, wishing she was in her place. The one that is okay with being second. The one that waits, stays and comforts. The one that heals the other's wounds, fills the crevices in the other's heart with pieces of their own. The one that consumes, destroys and builds you stronger. The one that is never recognized until its gone...

Next Chapter

She sat there engulfed in the shattered memories of her past, when he came along
"What's wrong?", he asked.

"Nothing.", she said faking her best smile.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him, as she turned to leave. Lifting her face to hold her eyes with his, "Now," he said, tilting his head to the side, half-smiling, "how about the truth?"

-Bushra Shaikh

Terrorists

*A poem from the point of view of a real terror victim*

We are terrorists, terrorists you say?

Terrorists who are afraid, of never having a place to stay.

Terrorized in our own lands we do live,

Wondering what next they'll ask of us to give.

Murdered and looted and destroyed in our country,

For our lives, why are you so hungry?

Helping us you are you say?

Spare that help, there's enough trouble anyway.
A place to live, a  place to pray
A place where the skies aren't so grey.

To wake up smiling is all we seek 

Just let us be, we beseech.

We are terrorists, terrorists you say? 

You showed us what's terror when you killed our families that way.

The little girl still looks for her mom,

Whose life you ended with that bomb.

The young boy can't wait to get old,

Take revenge now that you made his heart so cold.

Millions of families trying to find a reason to live,

It's the end for them they've come to believe.
Oppressed by our religion we are you say?
When it's you who took our basic right to live, away.

Whatever we do, they say it's wrong,

But then again what have you been doing all along?

Islam is at fault, is your thought

Do you think those people really believed in any god?

A blind massacre, the thirst for land

No one gave us a helping hand.

You watched everything from afar,

As they created all those life-long scars.

Closed your eyes, and it'd all disappear,

Wish we had it that easier.

We are terrorists, terrorists you say?

Terrorists who are just trying to make it to the other day.

Unforgiving

It's been quite sometime and I guess this is how the realization dawns, "a little too late" like she always said.
I needed her words, her unapologetic loud thoughts and how they instantly heal the raw wounds. I was guilty and ashamed and sorry but more than that, I was desperate...for her.
I left her without a reason and when she left I lost my reasoning. I needed her.
So I pick up my phone and dial her number, my palms sweaty. My heart's in my throat and suddenly I can't remember how to breathe.
After a couple of rings, there's dead silence at the other end. I open my mouth in an attempt to say something when, "Wrong number.", says a familiar voice but the crack in her voice says otherwise.

-Bushra Shaikh