All The Love I Have Inside

Sometimes, the thought that all that love I have unused inside my heart might be given to someone unworthy, scares me. So I clutch it tight in my chest and hold on to it with all my might. And then the thought of all that love never being given to anyone, scares me even more. Don’t get me wrong, I give away love to everything and everyone that I cross paths with, but there’s this special reservoir I have saved for that one person I haven’t even met yet, and I’m afraid I either use it up on someone wrong or never get to use it at all.

I’ve lasted for so long without using it. I may have let it leak for a while, but I never let it flow, always knowing when to seal it tight, and so I never regretted letting some of it go. I might spill some of it along the way, but it will always be there in full capacity. I’m just afraid it is too late and I give up on using it, that I start spilling it everywhere and when finally that person comes, they’re left with nothing, and all that love that has been saved forever for them, will be gone. But I also believe, if I was capable of holding all that love in for so long, then I can start all over again when it’s gone, I can start all over again when I have a motive right in front of me to fill myself up again, maybe even to adequately fit this one person that time.

So dear person who’s supposed to be the love of my life, my soulmate, or whatever they call it nowadays, I have love enough to last you in all your lifetimes in all the universes in all the timelines, and if it’s not enough, don’t worry for I am a bottomless well of emotions. Not only will you be loved endlessly and unconditionally, but you will also be lucky enough to be loved eternally, to exist in words, in poetry, to be everlastingly portrayed as art for the whole world to see. And that my love, that is just one of the perks of being loved by me. So whoever you are, wherever you are, you’re one lucky person and I’m sure I will be one, too. And even if I never get to meet you, know that you were going to be loved more than you ever imagined. And if you don’t exist, then at least I know I had it in me to give so much love.

Now everyone, go sleep knowing that someone out there loves you enough to write about you before even knowing you exist, or thinks about you when imagining happy moments of the future. You are loved more than you can ever imagine, and I hope one day you all get to feel it.

—Nada Shahin

Artwork by Erika Kuhn

In A Couple Of Years

In a couple of years, your dream will come true and you’ll be living in America just like you’ve always wanted to. You’ll fool around a lot, thinking it will heal your shattered heart. You’ll meet a lot of great people, but none of them will be the one. You’ll feel like this is it, all you ever wanted from life has happened to you, but you still won’t get why you feel so blue. You’re grateful for where you are and what you’ve become, and you’re definitely having the time of your life, but at the end of the day, you sleep alone in your bed and you wake up to no one but your cute golden retriever dog. Except the days when you’ve hooked up with someone the previous night, or the times you had a girlfriend but it didn’t work out. You’ve embraced the loneliness. It doesn’t bother you. It’s comfortable and familiar, and keeps the remains of your heart safe and sealed. You wanted this, you try to convince yourself. I call you because I’m in the country for a couple of days and I haven’t seen you in years. That phone call becomes the highlight of your day. We have coffee and catch up, and that becomes the highlight of your week. I tell you I’m still single, and suddenly you feel lighter. You ask me why, I look at you intently with those puppy eyes of mine you’ve always gotten lost in, and smile, so your heart skips a beat. You ask me after all those years and I say always, you kiss me. And suddenly everything makes sense, everything falls into place and you realize you’ve finally found that missing puzzle piece. And then you wake up, and it’s just you alone in your bed with that searing pain and emptiness in your chest, and your dog licking your face trying to wake you up. But this time you make sure that you will not repeat the same mistake twice. And you call me.

—Nada Shahin

Artwork by Dai Aly

I Want You

I want you.

I want you
emotionally
intellectually
physically.
I want you
in all the romantic ways
the excruciatingly painful ones,
and in every possible way out there
that I know and don’t know of.

I want you mine.
I want to wake up to you by my side,
I want to be the one you run to from the world and hide,
I want to dive deep into you,
drown
and never be rescued.

I want you to know
that I’m here for as long as you want me to stay,
that I’m more than enough,
that I could be the best thing that has ever happened to you if you let me be,
that I’m worth the risk,
worth the wait
and even worth the pain.

I want you
to stop fighting
to surrender
and realize that

you want me
just as much
just as painfully.

—Nada Shahin

Don’t Tell Me Anything

Don’t tell me how much you want to kiss me,
because we both know the only kiss we’ll ever have is a goodbye.
Don’t tell me to stay,
when we both know that every day we spent together is just one day closer to your departure.
Don’t tell me I am beautiful,
because each time I feel this way, I will be reminded that you’re the one who made me believe it.
Don’t tell me I light up your life,
when you turned off the lights of mine on your way out.

Don’t tell me anything
because I’d rather be ignored and ignorant
than be hurt.

—Nada Shahin

Artwork by WanJin GIM

The More I Look Into Your Eyes

The more I look into your eyes,
the more I get drawn closer to you,
as if you have some intense magnetic force attracting the barbed wires and fences all over my heart.

And it’s not just my heart that you mess with,
but you also get all my other body parts turbulent.
From the whole zoo going crazy in my stomach,
to fighting the many restraints holding me from just grabbing your face and kissing your pain away.
And that’s just the censored version, baby.

Your smile melts my heart every single time.
Your eyes hypnotize me and make me forget the world for a while.
Your touch electrifies me,
and the impulse flows through every neuron in my body,
sending shivers through my spine.

I burn
I pine
I perish

And damn you for making me feel all this,
for the very first time.

—Nada Shahin

I Froze

For a moment
the sun was trying to cover your face
so your eyes shone in a perfect shade of golden brown
stealing the spotlight from the sun.
And as if that wasn’t enough,
your perfectly symmetrical smile thought it wouldn’t miss the chance to join,
making the sun feel really stupid for trying to outshine you,
so it gave up and kissed you instead,
as if the scene needed to be more spellbinding.

And I froze,
I forgot what I was saying,
but why would I even let my voice interrupt this beautiful view?
And beautiful here is an understatement.
So I froze,
and engraved this piece of art in my head,
because wasting my time trying to physically capture this moment,
would be a loss I can’t afford.

So I froze,
because that’s the most appropriate reaction I could think of.

—Nada Shahin

The Ocean

Photograph by Mahin Fayaz

There’s something about me,
something I’m not exactly sure what it is,
that makes people run away
after they reach a certain depth,
and some even run
when the water just touches their legs.

They all love what they see,
they’re all interested in the stories they hear,
they even go as far as making an effort to stand by the shore and be captivated by its beauty.
And they keep moving forward until a wave comes,
even if it doesn’t hit them,
it still scares them off.

And I thought,
maybe I should calm the waves down, maybe I should keep hiding what’s underneath the clear blue waters deep down.
But then I also remembered,
that even my biggest strongest waves sometimes look beautiful,
and the secrets I hold deep down are a part of me I can’t ignore,
and if they can’t get past the shore,
it’s them who are missing on the beauty and mystery I uphold.

Maybe they don’t know how to swim,
maybe what lies underneath the waters scares them,
maybe they are not fond of the ocean,
or just can’t handle its complexities and fluctuations.

And it’s fine.
It’s fine because someday sometime, someone will want to dive right into the ocean and explore each and every corner of both its clearest and darkest parts,
someday sometime,
someone will surf the waves fearlessly and will fight back when the waves throw them off.
And on an even better day,
someone will do both,
and will want to spend the rest of their life deciphering and interpreting the ocean,
falling in love with every detail they encounter,
until the ocean becomes so familiar,
until the ocean becomes home.

And until then,
I won’t change a thing.
My clear blue surface will keep captivating the passers by,
my waves will hit as hard as they wish,
and I will embrace all the mysteries underneath,
and laugh at those who run
when the water touches their legs.

—Nada Shahin

The Love We Think We Deserve

I might have come across Stephen Chbosky’s quote “We accept the love we think we deserve” several times, but never paid that much attention to it. But today when I heard it in the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” I didn’t just let it pass over my head like I usually do. Maybe because they were talking about why do good people usually settle for less than what they deserve in relationships, and that was something I have never done. In fact, I’ve never even been in a relationship, and a lot of people have always told me that it was because I was too good and deserved better.

But what if I’m just arrogant? What if I just think I deserve someone that does not exist? Or even worse, someone that I do not even deserve? I mean, I must have come across good people at one point or another, right? Then why have I never settled for any of them? Why have I never accepted any kind of love? Is it possible that I really am so full of myself, or is it much more complicated than that? Is being good really all that matters? Is it enough? Or is there so much more to it than just being good?

Let’s drift off the relationships a little bit and think of friendships. I’ve had horrible friendships, been under-appreciated by a lot of people who I eagerly accepted that love of theirs that was definitely much less than what I deserved. So how come I’ve been able to be this person in one aspect of my life and a totally different one in another? Or is choosing a partner a much more specific process and so I end up being more picky? Or maybe, just maybe, it is remotely possible that I have actually not met a person who would give me the love I deserve because it is rather a more qualitative perspective rather than a quantitative one? Like we all deserve certain types of love rather than amounts and it’s not about someone who loves you a lot, but it’s more likely about someone who loves you the way you deserve to be loved. As if each one of us has their love specifically tailored for them, that no matter how many perfect people they meet, and no matter how much love they’re given, it will not be the same as that one that perfectly fits.

Think about it. You only spend the rest of your life with one partner but have at least a few friends. Each friend loves you in a different way, and gives you just a piece of that love you deserve, but you’re not missing much because they somehow all chip in with different puzzle pieces and you have a big part of the picture filled. But then there’s this one person who needs to at least fill the rest of the puzzle alone, and to some people they may even be a whole new puzzle on their own, and it’s no longer as simple as it was with your friends. Here, you need to be very specific and as picky as you wish to get. But guess what, they say no matter how smart and careful you are, when that person comes you’ll just know it; and I never knew it. You’re supposed to fall so deep and not know what hit you or how it hit you but still enjoy every moment of it, and I’ve been standing still for as long as I can remember.

We do accept the love we think we deserve and I believe that even if we think we deserve more, it will always be much better than settling for less. There is no shame in loving yourself a little bit extra, and accepting some more love in your life, because that, you sure as hell deserve.

—Nada Shahin

Dear Person trying to get closer with incomprehensible behavior

Artwork by Dai Aly

Dear Person trying to get closer with incomprehensible behavior,

I am tired of your shit. I don’t know what we are and I just can’t keep pretending it’s alright. You either won’t stop talking or won’t talk at all. And when you talk, you talk about very generic superficial boring topics. Or you reply every 12 hours, usually very early in the day or very late at night; the times when you’re most bored and lonely at. You come and go as you will. One day you’re all over the place, the other I have no idea where have you disappeared. When I tease you about your inconsistency, you blame it on me, and when I drift for a second, you make me feel like I’m the bad person. You make sure I’m hooked up and that I get used to your existence. You make your presence in my life, a habit. A very bad one. And once you sense that I’m tired of your inconsistency, you give me something to hold on to, enough to push away the doubts for a while.

But I’m tired of temporary pain killers without treating the cause. I’m tired of being treated like an antibiotic dose. And I think I deserve to know what am I to you and where do you exactly want us to go.

Am I someone you’re interested in knowing better? Because then you would speak more and get into deeper conversations. Am I someone you have feelings for? Because that is not how you treat someone you like at all. Am I a friend? Because a friend needs you to always be there no matter what.

Or am I what I fear most, something to kill time when you’re bored? Because if so, I will not accept being treated as the games on your phone when there’s no internet connection. I will not accept being treated as a TV set at 3 am. I will not accept being treated any less than the way I deserve.

So make up your mind. Decide what I am to you and try to make some effort to make it true. Decide what I am to you or just leave, because if you really think of me as a way to kill time, then I don’t want you. And next time you try to enter someone’s life, make sure you know what you want.

I’m Done

I’ve reached the point where I’m done of having to always take the first step and make the first move. I am done of having to wait for a positive reaction from you to every action I do. I would like to see you try hard and make an effort to get me, to show me that you too have feelings for me. I have done more than enough, I did all that I could do and tried my best to not hurt my ego. So I think it is now your turn to try, to over-think, have some sleepless nights and maybe get depressed at some point, in an attempt to prove that what I’ve done for you was worth it and that you are making an effort too, to show me that you feel the same way like I do. Do something, I’m giving up on you. Prove me wrong, please I want you to.