Always tired

[metamorphesque]

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

[aatifameer]

I am not her.

Her skin carries a history I cannot hold.

Her silence is carved by a thousand interruptions,

her body mapped with borders she never drew.

.

I cannot understand.

Not the fire of being burnt alive,

not the shame stitched into her name,

not the hands that trespassed,

not the bars of invisible cages.

.

I say it again,

I cannot understand the pain.

.

All men, Yes All men

Even me, even my father, even my brother.

We orbit a privilege we never asked for

but always inherit.

.

I am not treated as an object.

No one weighs me as property.

The world does not look through me

as if my worth were a dowry

or my voice a disruption.

.

But I am not blind.

I can try to understand.

I see the fractures running through sidewalks,

through families,

through laws, religion

through the air itself.

.

And yet,

I fear my own reflection.

Because I am a man.

~ Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

Heart, keep that with you.

Hold it like blood.

Feed on it till everything else dies.

Make it your home. It's yours afterall.

.

Eyes, you are behind my eyes,

dive in it. an ocean.

Deep, vast. But Be careful.

You will lose yourself.

You will become it.

.

Skin,

wear it.

Make your wardrobe from it.

Stitch my skin on your body.

.

Oh my love,

don’t you understand?

I need you like air.

I want you like pain wants a wound.

.

So Let’s burn, Turn to ash, No names, No bodies, No more you and me.

Just Us, just ash,

Just ocean, just forever.

.

My eyes! My eyes! My eyes!

they won’t stop. They keep breaking

every time they don’t find you.

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

Be the bruise I press just to feel you again.

If healing means walking away from you, may I never mend.

Make my heartbeat a graveyard where only you dance.

Hurt me like a ritual, I'll believe it's devotion.

If you poison me slow, I'll still call it whiskey.

Even if you curse me in every language, I'll still call it poetry.

I'd rather be haunted by you than healed by anyone else.

Even if your love is violence, I'll keep asking for more like it's mercy.

If I survive you, I'll never forgive myself.

She is a goddess, brilliant, golden. I am the rot that loved her feet.

I kissed the floor she walked on and tasted god in the dust.

She pulls me beneath her surface, where light can't reach, but I follow anyway.

~ Aatif Ameer ( In the Abyss,can't write a poem, only some lines, she leaves my mouth only to breath )

[mournfulroses]

Juliette Drouet, from a letter to Victor Hugo, featured in My Beloved Toto: Letters

[aatifameer]

Leave your fingerprints on every silence I sit in.

Don’t be kind, stay cruel and unforgettable.

Let your ghost kiss my throat when I try to speak of you.

I sleep with the door open, hoping your absence walks in.

Take my dreams hostage, and never let them go.

Be the weight that keeps my heart from floating away.

I don’t want closure, i want collapse.

Don’t drift into peace. Rage in my veins forever.

Let your voice run in my memory until it sounds like prayer.

If I’m ever free of you, I’ll chain myself back.

Let your memory be a blade I can’t stop kissing.

Be the ache I wrap around my ribs when the world goes quiet.

~Aatif Ameer ( Some lines )

[stay-close]

“She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[aatifameer]

I used to build dreams about you.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[aatifameer]

You are the fire licking at my bones,

the hunger in my ribs,

the blood in my veins.

.

Say my name. Just say it.

"Come here, come to me"

I'll leave my funeral, rip through the grave,

claw my way from the dark,

just to die in your arms again.

.

Ask me,

What color are my lips?

What taste burns on my tongue?

What fills my eyes?

I'll say your name.

"Now my Intoxication is Devotion, a Hymn to Infinity."

.

Bite me. Tear me open.

Let my skin remember your teeth,

let my wounds whisper of you.

Wound me. Heal me. Scar me.

A mark of you, forever mine.

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

You are my goddess, you magnificent divine,

words are feeble, unworthy.

I cannot define you,

I can only worship.

To speak your name is to set my tongue on holy fire of salvation,

.

You touch me, and my pale, lifeless skin erupts into gold,

as if I had never lived before you.

You lick my tears, and they turn to whiskey,

sweet, searing, consuming,

Your eyes carve light into my darkness,

you are the sight I was born blind without.

.

The strike of your sword on my skin is not pain but rapture.

From your blade, even agony is devotion.

I bleed willingly beneath your hands,

for every mark is a gift,

every scar a scripture written in flesh.

.

I tear open my chest,

Now,

you have two hearts with you.

One was mine, both are yours.

.

I chant your name more than I breathe,

until my throat is raw, until my lips crack,

until the syllables of you are all that remain of me.

Your name is my salvation, my surrender, my ruin.

And when you whisper mine back,

you resurrect me,

and give my name a meaning.

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

It's night again.

I look up at the moon without blinking.

You shine, you divine.

Your light falls on my skin, making it shimmer.

Like a wave, I reach for you, again and again.

Kiss me, if you are cold as ice,

turn my lips blue,

freeze my blood,

hold me in your arms until i feel nothing.

.

It is morning again.

I look up at the sun without blinking.

I know my eyes will turn white.

You shine, you divine.

Your warmth spreads over my skin, burning, claiming.

Like a sunflower, I turn my face to you, always.

Kiss me, my lips are blue, frozen.

If you burn like fire,

ignite my lips,

reduce them to ashes,

scatter me.

.

Now, I see the ocean.

I am nothing but ashes, waiting to be carried away.

Take me, mix with me, make me yours forever,

or bury me under the sand,

so you can reach me with every wave,

again and again.

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

You saw my skin and flesh,

tasted it, consumed it, liked it.

Will you say the same about my rotten bones?

.

You dive into my eyes,

Can you see your reflection?

.

A filthy, cursed, rotten animal like me

shouldn’t be seen,

shouldn’t be touched,

shouldn’t receive affection.

But you saw beyond these things.

.

You kissed this ugly face

like you had waited for centuries,

as if it wouldn’t poison you,

even if it kills you.

.

Where am I now?

The folds on the sheets,

your hair on the bed,

our clothes on the floor.

I see your eyes, your smile.

Oh!!, I am in your arms.

Raw. Naked. Exposed.

.

Your warmth makes me drunker

than the whiskey on your breath.

Even if you bury me six feet deep,

I will crawl back to you,

so you can touch me,

make me alive again,

kill me with your hands,

and give me the death I crave.

~Aatif Ameer

[mournfulroses]

Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to John Murry, featured in The Letters of John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield

[aatifameer]

I thought if I held you tighter,

our bodies would dissolve into one,

skin stitched, veins tangled, breath shared.

.

I thought next time I would see you,

i'd sew myself to you,

but I don’t know if there is a next time.

So I inhale, or I try to,

but i can't

then I remember,

i left myself behind, at the subway station,

.

This world, this cruel, this rotting world,

it takes and it breaks,

it feeds you suffering like it’s air.

If I could, I had burnt it down,

scattered its ashes at your feet,

built a place where only your light exists.

.

You are tired. So tired.

Use me, however you need.

Lay your head on my chest,

press your weight onto me,

if that’s what it takes to keep you standing.

.

Kiss me, let the pain flood through,

cry into my mouth,

let no one hear.

.

In the high times, in the ruin,

I will be beside you.

Don’t fall alone.

If you must fall, fall onto me.

Let my back take the wounds,

not yours.

.

You are the woman I can die for,

the woman I can kill for,

the woman I want to follow,

into fire, into the void,

into whatever world we make.

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

My hands are cold, my feet are numb.

My spine curves and twists,

my mind is nailed to a pain that does not end.

Mom, please carry me, I am weak.

(14 February, 2023)

------------------------------------

Another day, the same bed.

I have forgotten the sun,

forgotten the air.

No lights in my room,

only a thin blade of sunlight on the wall.

I chase it with my eyes,

but it never stays.

(14 February, 2024)

------------------------------------

They say tonight is for prayer, for salvation.

So I kneel,

but the sun is cold, the air unmoving.

Light slips away, and I am nowhere.

.

Then you, i hear your voice, my goddess

My sun, my light, my warmth.

You reach into my eyes, I am alive.

(14 February, 2025)

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

Screams crawl inside my lungs,

breath slips away like it doesn't belong.

Mom, the food you make feels like

swallowing stones.

Laughter, smiles,

I wear them, but I don’t own them.

I forgot what real felt like.

(13 February, 2023)

------------------------------------

Spoke a word today, just one.

Mostly, I blink at the ceiling,

counting seconds in my bones,

watching sunlight carve shapes on my walls.

I wonder if light remembers itself after it fades.

What if I become a photon when I die?

(13 February, 2024)

------------------------------------

The ache in my chest reminds me I exist.

It doesn’t crush me anymore,

just lingers, slow and deep, like it belongs.

I live in my memories more than my present.

I am still sitting on a beach beside you,

watching the waves reach our feet,

wondering if the ocean remembers us too.

(13 February, 2025)

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

Why me? Why always me?

I am a curse in every story,

especially my own.

I am the one who drinks.

Scratch my face with a knife.

Tear the tongue from my mouth.

And go away.

Let me sleep.

(12 February, 2023)

---------------------------------------------------

I can’t hold myself together.

I am tired. Too tired. Too much tired.

I don’t want to see faces,

especially my own.

Sleep won’t come, and when it does,

I can’t breathe.

I reach for help,

but my hand finds my throat instead.

Maybe this is the end.

(12 February, 2024)

---------------------------------------------------

I can’t sleep without your voice.

The ocean should envy the way

your lips shape my name.

Say it again, and I might start to like it.

I want to see your eyes before I sleep,

before I wake.

Your scent calms me.

I breathe you in,

and I am here.

(12 February, 2025)

~Aatif Ameer

[aatifameer]

I was a man with no god,

filthy, worthless, impure.

Black blood, wounds carved deep,

a face unworthy even of spit.

Not fit for death, not fit for life,

made only to suffer,

to beg, to yearn,

for mercy that never came.

.

Now, I am a man with a goddess.

The more I see her, the more I beg,

please look at me.

She touches me, drinks me in,

tastes my blood, my pain,

fills me, takes me, makes me hers.

I am a vessel, and she, my end.

At last, I am not worthless.

.

The sun of my life, let me burn in your flame.

My morning sunshine, fall on my face.

My moonlight, lead me, I am blind.

.

I should have died in your arms,

that is the death I want.

I should have lived in your arms,

that is the life I yearn for.

.

I do not see myself walking away.

I only see myself following you.

~Aatif Ameer