Amrin Khalil

honest & vulnerable poetry 🥀 Follow my IG @amrinkhalilpoetry

[amrinkhalil]

I am young and confused. Is that such an unforgivable sin? What else can you do at 25 but try?

Amrin Khalil, @amrinkhalilpoetry

[amrinkhalil]

Just because you are soft doesn’t mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the colour of gold.

- Victoria Erickson

[amrinkhalil]

From a small minded town

Only trying to hold me down

I wish it was but it wasn’t easy

To inherit a whole legacy

Is my spine strong enough to carry

Everything you raised to your good name

Am I what your sacrifices run into until they run out?

I was too soft for this circus, it broke me and left a rock

You were too soft for this circus, it broke you and left a seed

I’m hanging on to your branches, my knuckles white

I didn’t know how high up I’d go following your steps

They’d say he was salt of the earth

And I was a matchstick in your hand made forest

All he had to do was raise a daughter not a dynamite

Small girl with her small head making big waves.

My name the tarnish of yours

He was seeking service and she was seeking pleasure

They already say it anyway.

There’s claw marks all over my body

My climb was hard, I’m sorry

I fought tooth and nail

I never sharpened your name into a throwing star

They’re laughing at me

What a dumb little girl

Too proud to claim her roots

But if I had they’d say I got it all served on a silver platter

You warned me, I know

This was my own doing

Our doomed fates intertwined long before I made my choice

I’m afraid to look down

Should I just keep climbing?

You left me everything, what if I crash on the cushion you made for yourself to fall on?

They’d say look at all these holes

He let that senseless girl make on his shields

She left him fence less

Defence less.

Your name is the heaviest thing I carried

Clutched on to it

Close to my chest

All the hands that tried to snatch it - bitten

I slipped a couple of times

But it was all in the dark

Can we forgive what happens at night fall

And look at everything I gathered in the day light ?

I was just a little girl

It was such a big world.

I hope you remember

I was never a big talking

Risk taking

Time wasting

Free loading

Waste of space.

When these

Back talking

Short cutting

Ever plodding

Big dreaming

Envious little show offs

Make me one of them

Will you tell them I worked to make myself worthy of my dreams?

That I paid my dues to all my smaller dreams before I took this leap?

My feet are calloused

You can see bone from all the bullets I took

I can see bone from all the bullets you took to raise me

Your feet are calloused

I dreamed upside down and you told me to keep dreaming

Now all my destinies are on the other side of the world

And you tell me to go fulfill them

“Go open the gates for everyone behind you”

It feels like a mountain on my chest

But I think I’m ready to climb now.

This city built you to raise me

This city built me to ruin me

I wish this upon no one but myself

You wished it upon no one and said no but I was in love

As absurd as it sounds

I am still in love

And I know darn well you are too

I am knee deep in the mistake I made at 17 because of the mistake you made at 17

At least I made the same mistakes as you

So you can find mercy for me in your heart

And maybe a little pride

Maybe they’d say

Look at her

Just like the honourable man who raised her

He taught her well

Maybe they’d say

She looks just like him

All my life all I prayed for and dreamed for was to become you.

My eyes are yet to fall upon anything greater.

- Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

I feel like so much of youth is confined into “I am too young to walk past a mirror without looking.” It’s not just about how easily we are distracted by beauty but also how we are obsessed with the reflection of us than who we truly are, how we are constantly rebuilding ourselves and trying to look for new things in all the same old places, how we pick ourselves apart, our hopefulness before time has had its way with it, how much control desire has over our dreams, I can think of so much more. I’m not one to explain myself or to even ponder over my own verses, I just know that this verse has many more interpretations than my age allows me to realise.

[amrinkhalil]

I hate the smell of artificial jasmine, I was born in a country that bred the authentic ones. Unlike my mother I never wore them on my hair because it made me feel vulnerable like a little girl imitating womanhood even though I am a fully grown woman myself. I was raised in a generation that was unforgiving of femininity. Can you imagine little girls being mocked and ridiculed for being too girly? Ironic. Only pretty girls could afford to be feminine, the rest of us had to display brain or brawn so we could be identified by anything other than our reflections.

Pretty girls have their doors opened for them, it was fine when it was just car doors and house doors and restaurant doors but it hurt when it turned into doors that led to rooms of opportunity and power. Because all those years of building brain and brawn had to lead to some kind of pinnacle right? Too much time and too much effort was already put in to not see it through. Because boys can afford to be good at things but girls had to be exceptional in order for their households to not swallow them whole. Some of them did deserve it though while some of their calibres did not even reach my ankles, my petty arrows aimed at their fair and lovely foreheads for a long time until I realised power is not in the hands of who entered the room, it is in the hands of the one holding the door open.

Beauty and the chokehold it has. A man’s lustful eyes could never see the tricks it plays to get what it wants. My envy became respect. They played well with the cards in their hands, didn’t they? Who is to say, if I were dealt the hand, I wouldn’t do the same?

I hate the smell of artificial jasmine, I was born in a country that bred authentic ones. Pitiful how all the Kings men and all the Kings horses could not bottle one petal of one flower for their Queen. So she grew herself an entire garden. Then you look at the dirt under her nails with disgust? Can you imagine women being mocked and ridiculed for not being woman enough? Ironic.

Amrin Khalil, @amrinkhalikpoetry “artificial jasmine”

[amrinkhalil]

The only thing my belly ever garnered was a fire pit yet somehow each time my lips part flowers fall out of them. I promise you my blood is always boiling, rage is how I know I am alive, yet it flows like a river of ink. Every poem is ripped from me like a limb and presented in wrapping paper to you. No two set of eyes bear the same meaning. No two set of lips sing them alike. No two set of hands hold them to the same promise. Verses become oaths become confessions become ridiculed become whatever become of little significance because glory belongs not to the verdict, glory belongs to being read.

Amrin Khalil, @amrinkhalilpoetry “reader not follower”

[amrinkhalil]

Is it too much to ask for a set of paint covered calloused hands? The roughest hands have the softest touch, don’t they? I was late to every love that reached my door. Now I live at the edge of it. Mistaking every reflection that falls on my window pane to be hunting everything but me. Mending a slaughtered heart. Tardy women with their prescribed loneliness. I open my mouth to recite a love poem and it sounds like rebellion. I can never seem to catch the eyes that are watching me, only looking into them after they’ve already looked away. I am late to every love that reached my door. Would you stay at my doorstep knocking, until I make my way downstairs to let you in? I open my mouth to recite a love poem and it sounds like your name.

-Amrin Khalil @amrinkhalilpoetry “Tardy”

[amrinkhalil]

My good years wasted hating.

My wise years wasted calculating.

Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

I couldn't enemy what I envy because they were my friends first.

Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

Everyone I put on a pedestal is now on a step. Here I am on the same stairwell. Climbing.

/Dream Job/ Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

Dusting it away and rubbing it in feels like the same motion to my hands. 🥀 Comment your favorite line 🤎 #amrinkhalil #inaarapoetry #creativemuslimwomen #muslimpoets #brownpoets #poetsofcolor #tumblrvibes #tumbltaesthetic #tumblrquotes #darkacademiaaesthetic #darkacademiapoetry #artlixirfresh #classicliterature #literaryquotes #visualpoetry #poetsofinstagram #indianpoets #indianpoetsociety #deadpoetssociety #heartbreakquotes #heartachequotes #poets #poetsofig #girlswhowrite #wordswithqueens #poetryforlife #truthtotable #truthbombs (at Chennai, India) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgrdIezvUOY/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[amrinkhalil]

@ashwin_shyam98 dressed up like he walked out of a Dickens novel 🤌 #peoplescreatives #tumblraesthetic #journal #artistoninstagram #visualart #visualpoetry #visualcrush #quotes #poetryisnotdead #deadpoetssociety #writersofinstagram #agameoftones #tumblrvibes #Tumblr #vscocam #lightroom #darkacademiaaesthetic #darkacademiapoetry #indie #hipster #moodygram #madetocreate #creativemuslimwomen #poetsofcolor #indianpoetry #indianpoetsofinstagram (at Kilpauk Medical College) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca37zW4PxZf/?utm_medium=tumblr

[amrinkhalil]

Even in anger- don’t forget your manners. Even in fear- don’t forget your morals. When everything you’ve prayed for is taken away from you, remember that you can pray for it again.

-Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

There is no worse place to be than at the brink of poetry being born. Art that is fighting to escape your physical form and evolve outside of you. Birth it. Raise it. What is an artist if not a mother? What is art if not a stubborn child?

- Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

I'm scared of becoming a tired earthquake/ A sea-motionless/ How long can I keep roaring when everyone else gets to sing?

Amrin Khalil

[amrinkhalil]

[metamorphesque]

the unbearable heaviness of girlhood / Su Xinyu / Lucie Brock-Broido