Verses on love, longing, betrayal, and the quiet courage
of choosing yourself when the world looks away.
One look at me, and I am floored,
A single smile makes me adored.
One touch that soothes away the pain,
One kiss, and I crave it all over again.
One step you take, I run to you,
My heart beats, missing a few.
But when you move away, I feel the hurt,
No love is left, only the ugly curt.
I hate the coldness in your silence,
And the unacknowledged emotional violence.
I despise it when you say you're right,
And leave me weeping through the night.
One whisper soft against my ear,
Removes all my doubt and fear.
One glance across a crowded room,
Is all I need to feel and bloom.
One breath, I hear from you close and deep,
Makes me promise, that I will forever keep.
But I hate the way you disappear,
Then claim you hold me ever dear.
I hate the friends you put above,
My honest, patient, steady love.
I hate that I am always put last,
When all our happy times have passed.
I hate the way you talk to me,
When life gets busy, as it can be.
I hate the way you cut your hair,
Yet I want to caress it with touch and care.
But there is one thing I hate the most:
It's that I don't hate you, a fact I boast.
One night together beneath the moon,
Hoping that dawn won't come too soon.
One dream where we are side by side,
With nowhere left for our love to hide.
One life is all that I want to spend,
Holding your hand until the very end.
I know I break things, I know I do wrong,
These hands that love you are clumsy but strong.
I question your heart often, when I should trust you instead,
Forgive me for doubting when my own heart has always said.
I fight you too hard at times, I know I push you away,
And then I fall apart at the thought you won't stay.
You didn't have to, I know, but you're still right here,
And that means the world to me, more than you will know, my dear.
My love for you is a haunting, it's desperate to hold,
It wounds me also deepest, unseen and uncontrolled.
It spills out all wrong, it comes out like a storm,
But deep down, all of it, you are my cozy and my warm.
I know I've made you cry when you deserve a smile,
I know I made the journey harder, our walk of every mile.
But I see what we are, and I see what we've built,
And we chose to stay past the anger, past the guilt.
Because you are not just a moment to me,
You are every tomorrow I am hoping to see.
You are my mornings and laughter and my coming back home,
You are the proof that my heart was never meant to roam.
I am learning to hold you the way that you need,
To water this love like a slow-growing seed.
To speak before silence turns into a wall,
To reach for your hand before either of us fall.
The future I see has your name written there,
Your voice in my day and your warmth everywhere.
A life that is steadier, clear and more true,
A life that we are building, for me and for you.
No more of the chaos, no more of the noise,
I want us to settle into quieter peace and joys.
To sit without fighting, to laugh without fear,
To know after everything, we chose to be here.
Bear with me, please, I am learning still,
To love you with softness, to bend and not spill.
I am not easy, I never claimed to be,
But no one in this world, for you, will be me.
So here is my truth, simple and plain,
I am trying, I'm trying, again and again.
And through every fight, every silence, every fall,
I love you. I love you. Most of all.
You call yourself a friend, but let me be clear,
You're addicted to attention, it's the only thing you hold dear.
Every room you enter must bow at your feet,
You'd shove your own shadow just to claim the front seat.
You block the door so you walk in first,
A grown woman, attention-starved and cursed.
You climb every stage though nobody called,
Desperate and thirsty, utterly enthralled.
The moment a crowd gathers, a spotlight appears,
You forget every person who held you through tears.
When fame is on offer and faces surround,
There is nobody in your mind, no one to be found.
Not me, not the ones who stood close and stayed true,
When the room fills with faces, there is only you.
You want all the love and all of the light,
Every acknowledgment has to be your right.
Someone gets noticed and you fall to pieces,
Your insecurity never decreases.
You tell me you care, and oh, how you sell it,
You wear devotion like a costume and wear it well with it.
You tell me you broke your own family for me,
That I am the reason, the cause, the decree.
But words are just words when the actions say more,
And everything tender walks straight out the door
The second a crowd or a camera appears,
Your sacrifice dissolves, and so do your tears.
Your genuine intentions, what a beautiful lie,
You wrap your schemes in friendship's sweet alibi.
You smile at my face with your sweet learned ways,
But honey, I've seen through you for so many days.
You leave me mid-sentence to chase a new crowd,
You'd skip your own funeral if the other one's loud.
You use me so casually, like I'm just a prop,
A background character while you sit at the top.
You lie so effortlessly, it never offends,
Your honesty only goes as far as it bends.
It doesn't matter how close or how long we have known,
The truth bends for you, you bend it alone.
You are dishonest with ease, without guilt, without shame,
You smile through the fiction and play the same game.
Close ones, strangers, it makes no difference to you,
Your lips move so smoothly around what isn't true.
And then you raise His name when it suits your cause,
You declare wallahi without a pause.
The word falls so easy, so holy, so clean,
As if God's own name can cover what you mean.
You swear by the Most High to seal every claim,
As if God's own witness will clean up your game.
The oath on your tongue while the scheme is in your heart,
You've mastered the performance, you've perfected the art.
Behind the declaration, behind the sacred vow,
You're already planning, crookedly, and how.
You hide in plain sight with your righteous display,
You map every angle, you craft every play.
The wallahi comes easy, like air, like a sigh,
While you scheme in the shadows where nobody can spy.
You use God as cover, you pray and you cry,
Knowing full well every word is a lie.
You preach to me about the men I should avoid,
While you bat your lashes, playing coy and overjoyed.
You tell me stay back, don't speak, don't dare,
While you're already over there, flipping your hair.
You flirt with every man in every room,
Then tell me speaking to one spells my doom.
You laugh and you lean and you touch and you tease,
Then turn around and say, sister, please.
Don't talk to him, he's not for you,
While you're doing everything you told me not to do.
The rules are for me, the freedom is yours,
You guard my choices while you open all your doors.
You like to play unfair, it's the game that you choose,
You tilt every table so you never can lose.
You shift all the pieces, you rewrite the score,
You play without honour and then ask for more.
But bring up your family, oh, watch how you change,
Suddenly fairness becomes your whole range.
You beat on your chest about what's right and just,
While the games that you play turn everything to dust.
The audacity is loud, the hypocrisy is thick,
You've turned double standards into quite the trick.
Do as I say, but never as I do,
The rulebook only applies when it benefits you.
And God forbid someone else gets praised,
God forbid another name gets raised.
You shrink in your seat, your face goes tight,
Someone else's glory can ruin your whole night.
A colleague gets credit, a friend gets a clap,
And there you are, already ready to snap.
You twist your face and pick them apart,
Because someone else winning breaks your hollow heart.
You can't stand it when another one shines,
You manufacture drama from the thinnest of lines.
You whisper your doubts and quietly plant the seed,
Threatened by anyone else's achievement, anyone else's lead.
I see the jealousy rotting inside,
The envy you desperately try to hide.
Every time someone else is seen,
You turn an ugly shade of green.
And then comes your favourite party trick,
Dropping names fast, dropping names thick.
Oh I know him, oh she's my friend,
The list of important people has no end.
Every minister, every boss, every head of the floor,
You've personally met them all and a hundred more.
You name-drop like breathing, like it keeps you alive,
Like borrowing the powerful helps you survive.
But scratch the surface, pull at the thread,
And half of these connections live only in your head.
You collect important people like stamps in a book,
Not for the bond, but for the image it took.
Not because you're loyal, not because you're true,
But because their importance rubs off onto you.
You are not a friend, you are a fraud,
Playing victim while you play it broad.
Threatened by praise, addicted to control,
A hollow performance with a bottomless hole.
I see you clearly, every layer, every scheme,
I've always seen through you, however pure you seem.
Beneath the performance, beneath the parade,
I see every crack in the mask you have made.
And here is the part you haven't yet faced,
God sees you too.
Every whisper, every scheme, every smile misplaced,
Nothing you do in the dark stays hidden from view.
He heard every wallahi you swore and then broke,
Every oath used as cover, as strategy, as cloak.
He saw the planning that followed the prayer,
He saw the crooked path laid out with such care.
Every seed of envy you plant in the soil,
Every friendship you fracture, every loyalty you spoil,
Every lie told with ease, every game played unfair,
The One who sees all, sees everything there.
He watches in silence the choices you make,
He sees the devotion you perform and then fake.
You called on His name but you answered to none,
And He was watching, every single time you were done.
You think pretension will protect you, and for now it might,
Your image stays polished, you shine a borrowed light.
But the universe is patient, and it keeps perfect score,
What you send out returns, and it comes back times more.
Karma is not cruel, it is simply fair,
Every door you slammed shut, every trap you set there,
Every time you dimmed someone's light while you prayed,
Is building a debt that you cannot evade.
Everything you put out comes back.
Every lie, every envy, every selfish attack.
The games that you played and the rules that you bent,
The friendships you used and the love that you spent.
It circles back slowly, on its own perfect time,
And pretension may carry you, but only so far the climb.
There is a weight to this life that no image can hold,
And the price for a borrowed life eventually gets told.
So take your stage, take the games that you play,
Take the double standards you've built every day.
Take your manufactured tears and your crocodile fears,
Take the borrowed importance you've curated for years.
Take the wallahi you swore while you plotted and planned,
Take the crooked designs you laid out by hand.
Take the sacrifice story you love to retell,
Take the unfair games and the lies you sell.
I am not your audience.
I am not your applause.
I finally see you, every crack, every flaw.
And God sees you too, every oath, every design,
Every lie that you dressed in the name of divine.
The curtain has fallen. The theatre is done.
And I walked out smiling, the moment I won.
I loved you when you were loud,
When the room turned at the sound of your name.
I loved the way you owned the crowd,
I didn't know then it was all a game.
I loved the passion behind your eyes,
The way you swore that you would fight for me.
I didn't see through your soft disguise,
Or the price that love was going to be.
You'd hold my hand until a crowd appeared,
And then your fingers slowly let go.
As though my presence was something to be feared,
As though I was someone you didn't want them to know.
You'd spot a room of faces and your eyes would shift,
Your voice would change, your whole body would turn.
I told myself that it was something I could lift,
Your need for light, something I had to learn.
But I learned something harder then instead,
I learned the weight of standing all alone.
I learned how silence swells inside the head,
And how a crowd can make you feel unknown.
You loved being worshipped more than being known,
You loved the hungry eyes more than my own.
Every room became a kingdom, every crowd a throne,
And I was just the quiet you called home.
You'd switch your love on when someone leaned to see,
You'd reach for my hand when cameras turned our way.
But alone, that devotion ceased to be,
And I was left with silence in the gray.
You were dazzling in the light, I'll grant you that,
But brilliance built on hunger slowly fades.
And I sat watching you rise while I fell flat,
Quietly dissolving in the shades.
You said you fought for us, you said you tried,
You wore the warrior version like a crown.
You cried your case to everyone inside,
But you were the one who kept letting me down.
You claimed the love, you owned the story loud,
You told the world I was yours and you were mine.
But tenderness declared to an admiring crowd
Is not the same as love along the line.
You'd ration out your warmth like it was rare,
Hold it above me like something I must earn.
Your manipulation wrapped in tender care,
Your love, a gift you'd grant me in return.
And then I saw it clearly, what lived beneath,
The calculation hiding in your gaze.
The way you'd quietly, sweetly, softly seethe,
Then reappear with warmth like it was a phase.
You'd make me need you more than I should need,
You'd pull away and then come flooding back.
You planted hollow aching like a seed,
And watered it in secret with each lack.
You'd hollow me out gently, then fill me tall,
You'd love me fully when it suited your name.
You'd hand me something beautiful and let it fall,
Then smile as though none of it was part of your game.
I started questioning what between us was real,
Whether the tenderness was ever truly there.
Whether what I thought was love you could still feel,
Or something you constructed with exquisite care.
Falling out of love is not a crash,
It doesn't break you open, loud and clear.
It is a quiet, slow dissolving ash,
A warmth that dims and disappears from here.
It's the morning you wake up and feel relief
That you didn't hear from her the night before.
It's the slow and quiet lifting of a grief
You had been carrying without keeping score.
It's the moment in a room full of her light
When you watch her shine for someone new,
And instead of swelling with familiar fight,
You feel nothing. Just a cool and hollow view.
It's watching her perform the love she claims
For everyone who wasn't there with you.
Watching her pour herself into new flames,
And realising you stopped burning too.
I don't hate her, no, that would take too much,
Hate keeps you tethered, hate means you still care.
I just grew tired of the gentle clutch
That held me close and left me standing bare.
I grew tired of being second to a crowd,
Of being loved in whispers, dropped in light.
Of someone who could only love me loud
When the admiring eyes were watching her that night.
I grew tired of the version made for me,
The one kept back for private, dim, and small.
I deserved the full and unguarded, the free,
Not the love she switched on for the hall.
So I let the love go, the way it came,
Not with fire, not with fury, not with sound.
I quietly stepped away from her game
And planted both my feet upon the ground.
And what is left is something still and clear,
A version of myself with open eyes.
No longer shrinking when a crowd draws near,
No longer reading love through someone's disguise.
I do not need the hunger she calls dear,
I do not need an audience to know my worth.
I learned the quietest lesson of the year:
Real love has no audience on earth.
This is my everyday, this is what I see,
the world wakes up and then sleeps around me.
I watch and observe and I notice and preserve,
memories I gather, that a lifetime will serve.
I see the world go by, how it rushes and sings,
how life moves through every day, and flies as if on wings.
How it laughs in louder voices, how it gathers, how it shows,
how it carries every trophy that the noisy world bestows.
And as I sit and watch it pass, I quietly agree —
the world is filled with many things that were never meant for me.
Things that many people own, the things for which I long,
things that feel so right for all, yet on me sit wrong.
I don't have the clothes I want, I can't carry the style,
I don't have the fancy cars that take me quick the mile.
I don't buy the things I love when I pass them in the store,
I don't have a beautiful house that wears an elegant door.
I don't dine where menus hide their prices out of sight,
I don't wear the watches that flash gold under the light.
I don't holiday on islands, I don't fly above the sea,
I don't own the kind of life that strangers wish to be.
I don't go to parties, I don't celebrate the nothings,
I don't chase the fun things, the loud things, the somethings.
I don't post my mornings for the watching world to know,
I don't have the trophies that the louder people show.
I don't have a name that opens every closing door,
I don't speak the polished language that the powerful adore.
I don't have the network, the connections, or the flair,
I don't walk into rooms and feel the whole room stare.
And yet —
As I keep on watching, something stirs in me,
the world begins to blur, and the small things start to be.
Things that always stood beside me, things that were always there,
things I never paused to value, things I never knew were rare.
I look up at the skies and I see the clouds drift by,
I feel the wind caress me, like a long and easing sigh.
There is peace inside the silence, there is stillness, no noise —
am I an honest fool to feel, or have I turned wise?
I hear the birds at dawn, I hear the sounds that make me smile,
I take my time to stretch, I let the morning take its while.
I watch the sunlight lean across the corners of my floor,
I notice all this beauty that I never saw before.
And as I think on this some more —
I have the rain on rooftops, I have the moon at night,
I have the smell of fresh wet earth when first drops fall just right.
I have a book that waits for me, a song that softly stays,
I have a cozy quiet corner, set for my heaviest of days.
I have love around me, and a shelter where I sleep,
I can smile, I can laugh, I have days when I don't weep.
I have a hand to hold me, and a name that calls me home,
I have enough — and more than enough — I am never quite alone.
I have my parents' blessings travelling unseen through the air,
I have a few true names I can call when life feels bare.
I have a heart that still feels deep, though the world has tried to numb,
I have a faith that whispers strong — better days will come.
I have my health, my breath, my morning and my night,
I have my eyes to see this world in God's gentle light.
I have my own two hands, and the work they choose to do,
I have a soul so unique, that the world can't undo.
So tell me, when the day folds and the stars begin to pour —
with empty hands holding miracles, am I rich, or am I poor?
If gold is what they measure, then yes, my purse is thin,
but if blessings are what they weigh with, I have a fortune within.
For the rich man counts his coins and still keeps asking more —
and here I sit with nothing, feeling rich down to the core.
I want this, and then I want that.
Nothing is enough, and I won't take this ask back.
This is my hunger, this is my need;
A soul with a fire that I have to constantly feed.
I don't want to hear what I "can" or "cannot" do,
I want something more, something radiant and new.
I want something lovely, I want it to please,
I want the whole world to arrive with such ease.
I want the person I was destined to love,
A life that fits tight, like a hand in a glove.
I want the mercy of rain to shower me in grace,
And a permanent home — a beautiful resting place.
I want to travel, both wide and quite long,
To dance in the streets and to sing every song.
I want to rest deep, in a silence so still,
Safe from the noise and the world's endless thrill.
I want a friend until my life's end,
A place of my own, with no need to pretend.
I want to be queen, I want to be a dream,
To be every thought, no matter how extreme.
I want to feel, all that I haven't felt.
I want to heal, from every blow I was dealt.
I want to be loved, cared and spoiled...
I want to be a planner, with no plans foiled.
I want to be perfect, someone who was never whole,
I want to be the one remembered forever.
I want to be his favorite, not among a lot.
I want him to pick me, I want to be sought...
I want to dream and turn it all real.
I want to be envied, I want to be surreal.
I want this all — and still my wanting grows...
I want to be a forever, with none of the woes.
I want it all to happen in just a blink,
Before my restless heart can pause or think.
There is so much more… and more and more…
I want all of Heaven to knock at my door.
I want the wonders I can't yet imagine,
To have it all — pure and without any sin.
Will You grant me this? Will You give it to me?
O Allah, I am calling, I'm bowing on my knee.
I don't want it here, where the breath is too short,
Where time is a thief and the joy is a sport.
I want it forever, I want it to flow.
I want it for myself, I want it all the more,
I want it all there, where I see the light of Your face,
Where my "wants" finally dissolve in the depth of Your embrace.
Where my longing is over, and the searching is done,
And I find that "all the things I want" I had already WON.