My Mother Always Says, "If Ever You Feel Like Life's Way Too Unfair To You Know That Even One As This

Hey, I've loved love ever since I knew what love was. I love the thought of being in love or even the thought of someone truly loving something and you seem to feel the same. Romantic love is obviously glorified throughout all kinds of medium and is present every where around us and yep, despite never being in love I'm bound to believe it's worth it.

And sometimes, it just hits me, and there is this tiny tiny ache in me, desperately wanting something I don't even know how it feels and well, I choose to ignore it and move on. Do you ever get that? I'm guessing you do, but what I wish to know is how you deal with it?

Maybe by just bleeding out on pages or modestly moving on, heeding largely to things I've got control over. After all, 'tis not the first time and I've not loved entirely a single entity in life. Speaking specifically from the romantic aspect, certainly, there would always be that missing part of the puzzle so as long we do not get it. Being an only child, a sheer introvert and someone who's got so much to tell but no one to listen to, I feel like sometimes it's love and sometimes it's necessity disguised as love. I don't aspire to get someone who'd love me more than themselves but someone who'd dance with me in the rain even when there's lightning outside. Someone with whom I can contentedly do robbery over the apprehensions of death, someone whom I can love vehemently even 'fore I fall in love with them.

Trust me, it's not what you've lost that matters, but what you're losing while lamenting over it.

Shayan Das

i’m such a big fan of yours :)

romanticism is always going to hold a very special place in my heart, and within that place, lies an even smaller sector dedicated especially to your poems in particular. whenever i find myself staring at the ceiling with such existential dread it scares me, i long to stare at your poems instead. you are one of the reasons i find such beauty in the mundane and everyday. thank you, for everything you do, and it truly makes me feel.. i don’t know actually. its such an odd feeling reading your work, it makes me yearn to read every word you’ve ever written. i can never get enough.

<3

Gosh, I was having a tough day at work throughout and you just made my night with this. I just can't thank you enough. Sending loads of love and positivity along your way <3

Valentine's Month Poetry Recommendations 💌

1. Classical (rhymed & metered poetry)

Bright Star by John Keats

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Love's Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Browning

Amoretti LXXV by Edmund Spenser

When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats

I Loved You First by Christina Rossetti

I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale

To My Dear Husband by Anne Bradstreet

I Love You by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Air and Angels by John Donne

Love and Death by Lord Byron

Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal by Tennyson

2. Modernist/Contemporary (free & blank verses)

Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Naruda

Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

[i carry your heart with me] by e.e. cummings

Bird-Understander by Craig Arnold

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

For Keeps by Joy Harjo

Always For the First Time by Andre Breton

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

Any Lit by Harryette Mullen

To Be In Love by Gwendolyn Brooks

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Desire by Alice Walker

Romantics by Lisel Mueller

Come, And Be My Baby by Maya Angelou

3. Written by Me (personal selection)

Amore Immortale by Shayan Das

Flawed Perfection by Shayan Das

I Love Thee Not by Shayan Das

A Song of Love by Shayan Das

If Only by Shayan Das

End of Eternity by Shayan Das

For My Valentine by Shayan Das

They misconstrued my softness as weakness, perhaps oblivious that even the softest of waters can burn, break, cut and freeze people to death.

Shayan Das

I was a dream until one day I had my own dreams. My peers thought I'd outshine them; my parents expected my light would embellish them until one day it blemished me. 'Cause to shine is to build expectations and to build expectations is to be vulnerable. You ascend, albeit you know that the higher one goes, the more bones he breaks each time he falls. You trade your ambitions to build someone else's, snivel in silence and make endless excuses to defend each catastrophe until one day you find yourself becoming them, exhausted and devastated, on the verge of hitting mediocrity, and questioning why you couldn't be that anticipated one. All you wonder is if only you could stop that 7-year-old boy from striving those extra hours to top his class, rip apart the diary when he wrote his first story at 11, fasten those lips that whispered in praise of him, burn the books that told a 15-year-old boy that he can be almost anything in this world only if he aspires to. You pray only if you could dissolve into oblivion until one day you get to make a noise and yet remain unexplored.

Shayan Das

People think they fail in vain, but I say 'in vain' is a phrase for the defeatists. You might never know how unexpectedly your failure brings a rain of gratification in the sunburnt deserts of your adversaries, how miraculously it acts as a source of hope for all those who doubt their aptitudes all day long only 'cause they can't beat you and how enigmatically it opens infinite pages to be a bit more resilient, a bit more powerful, a bit stronger perhaps no book or teacher can ever make you comprehend the same. 

Shayan Das

Keep kissing me with your lips, embracing me with your arms and crushing me with your thighs until I eventually melt and start flowing through your veins.

Shayan Das

Tell me not you aren't worthy of love, that you're not supposed to love as if we aren't the fruits of it. Darling, hundreds of other people loved each other even before we were born, only for us to see the world and fall in love. Let's not forget that.

Shayan Das

The poetic urge to draw an analogy between every one thing with every other thing in the universe.

Shayan Das