Author: Anisah Hamid

Lover’s Halves

Original Writing

Half of me wants to smoke Marlboros with you and stain our skin with ash and ink and blood and sweat and kisses – everything that epitomises the lust that hangs in the air when we enter the same room. Half of me wants to devour you wholeheartedly, at once, until there is nothing left but the whisper of your existence. But the other half of me wants to write poems about you because every love song fits, and every great love story reminds me of us. It wants to dress up in a tiny black dress and feel you caress the dip of my spine whilst we slow dance to dulcet tones of our love’s journey. It wants to write you letters every day of the week so you know what my love for you sounds like; what true love really is.

My Favourite Book

Original Writing

He’s my favourite book; the vintage edition with the slightly worn-out pages, the binding disintegrating with my every touch so that I have to handle with care. He’s the cliffhanger and the happy ending that I desperately crave. He’s not the most popular book in the bookstore; he’s not at the shop-front, catching everyone’s eye in the window with his self-righteous front cover but he is my favourite piece of art. I like that about him. He’s not what people expect. And that is why he is mine.

– Tom Schulman

Quotes

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion, and medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Dead Poet’s Society

A Bucket List Wish

Original Writing

Every sunset will be witnessed with someone’s thumb over the pulse of my right wrist, watching the fiery glow softly caress everything it sets its sight on. I’ll be standing in the middle of a storm as the scent of our youth crashes into the ground, leaving behind a mess of broken ambition and ecstasy. Intoxicated with the idea of mystery and adventure, I’ll follow my happiness. Submerged in my freedom, I will live how life should be lived; with no limits, no expectations and no rules.

– Finn Butler

Poetry

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.

‘Saltwater’

Apologies of Love

Original Writing

I’m sorry that all of my words roll off my tongue in metaphors and my sentences string themselves together like needles and thread but I read too much poetry and over time, I have picked up the tiny habits. I’m sorry that I never stop talking until my letters have formed works of art and I’ve finished describing my thoughts and emotions in a way that nobody understands, but somehow they understand anyway. I’m sorry that it takes so long to get things done when I’m around because I spend half my time staring into the distance, wondering what the clouds would taste like, and how I would put that taste on paper, and you spend all your time snapping your fingers in front of my face as though that will scare the poetry out of my mind to slip onto the street and seep through the gutters where nobody will ever find it. My apologies could go on for miles but I don’t have the space of time to tell you all of them, and for that, I am sorry, too, but sorry will never change the fact that I have let the poetry creep down my throat and claw itself into my bones, take apart my every being and replace my heart with words I have no trouble saying but you have trouble listening to. I know that eventually, you will grow tired of it, but until then, I will hand you love letters when you least expect it and write your name into my lungs so that even when I cannot breathe, I will remember the sound of your voice. I will surprise you with afternoon picnics and concert tickets and movie nights and even though while you are rubbing your thumb on the back of my hand I am writing a poem in my mind about the feel of it, I still have not managed to write a poem that describes you perfectly enough because you are not merely something that can be put into words, and no poetry will ever be worthy of you. My love for you is a sensation that only I will ever get the pleasure of having because although my mind is filled with beautiful words, none of them will ever be beautiful enough for you.