Nayyirah Waheed Quotes

i am a silk field of vulnerability.

Listen to my poems
but do not look for me
look for you.

there is no healthier drug than creativity.

can you be a daughter.
if you have no
mother language."
- african american iii

I go. with all the nothings,all the myths and the flawings, and return full. a new metal. a waterlight

I am your friend. a soul for your soul. a place for your life. home. know this. sun or water. here or away. we are a lighthouse. we leave. and we stay.

But this was never a relationship. i have no idea who you are.

Poetry is evidence that the heart thinks and the mind feels.

I don't pay attention to the
world Ending.
It has ended for me
many Times
and began again in the morning.

Be easy. take your time. you are coming home. to yourself. - the becoming

Does he not remember he is half woman.

the rain in this room is low and thick
and undressing my heart through the air. – intimacy

trust your work.

healing
begins
the moment
you
want it to

What we hide and do not say turns into another mouth that only we know.

my mother gave me islam.

my father gave me the god of absence.

and here i am.

a religion made of myself.

you and the poems have a lot to talk about.

No'
might make them angry
but
it will make
you
free.

i am a brutally soft woman.

You
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you

if
a man
can
only show vulnerability
for
what is between my legs.
can
only
be
a
heart
during
sex.
if an orgasm
is
the only way
he
can
weep.
what is his life
but
a cage.

If someone does not want me it is not the end of the world. But if I do not want me, the world is nothing but endings.

i want work that is a relentless oasis.

our tragedy begins humid.
in a humid classroom.
with a humid text book. breaking into us.
stealing us from ourselves.
one poem. at a time.

it begins with shakespeare.

the hot wash.
the cool acid. of
dead white men and women. people.

each one a storm.

crashing. into our young houses.
making us islands. easy isolations.
until we are so beleaguered and
swollen
with a definition of poetry that is white skin and
not us.
that we tuck our scalding. our soreness.
behind ourselves and
learn
poetry.
as trauma. as violence. as erasure.
another place we do not exist.
another form of exile
where we should praise. honor. our own starvation.

the little bits of langston. phyllis wheatley.
and
angelou during black history month. are the crumbs. are the minor boats.
that give us slight rest.

to be waterdrugged into rejecting the nuances of
my own bursting
extraordinary
self.
and to have
this
be
called
education.

to take my name out of my name.
out of where my native poetry lives. in me.
and
replace it with keats. browning. dickson. wolf. joyce. wilde. wolfe. plath. bronte. hemingway. hughes. byron. frost. cummings. kipling. poe. austen. whitman. blake. longfellow. wordsworth. duffy. twain. emerson. yeats. tennyson. a

we are never our own.
we must change this fact.

- acceptance

i like myself. when i am myself.

My english is broken.
on purpose.
you
have to try harder to understand
me.
breaking this language
you so love
is my pleasure.
in your arrogance
you presume that i want your
skinny language.
that my mouth is building
a room for
it
in the back of my throat.
it is not.
i have seven different words for love. you have only one. that makes a lot of sense

Put some honey and sea
water by your bed.
acknowledge. that your being needs sweetness
and cleansing.
that it is sore.
that you are. soft.
- orishas

If
the ocean
can calm itself,
so can you.
we
are both
salt water
mixed with
air.

I want to live so densely. lush. and slow in the next few years, that a year becomes ten years, and my past becomes only a page in the book of my life.

she asked 'you are in love what does love look like' to which i replied 'like everything i've ever lost come back to me.

Sometimes i want to say it. and there is nothing in english. that will say it.

You are a flood in my hands.

when,' is not something you ask someone when the bodies of their aunt. uncle. friends. first love. cannot be found.

it was only and ever love.

as a child
there was either
books
or
pain.
i chose books.

-how i became a writer

Whether with a lover or none. i reek of love. i stink of love.

as an artist, i do not always enjoy the questions, 'what were you thinking when you wrote this. what was the inspiration behind this.' these questions imply that there is always thought involved in creation. for me it is the exact opposite. creativity is the act of experiencing the unconscious in the conscious. sometimes, i want to say, without sarcasm, 'i do not know what my soul was thinking when i wrote that poem, i was too busy listening.

Some words. The way they look at you...

i am the line. on both sides there are songs in my name. – bi

As a writer, if someone falls in love with my work, I know they have fallen in love with my mind. Having no idea what my face looks like, they chose my mind. Art may be the only place a woman can be whole without being seen.

i will. and this will end. - closure | dankyes

I lost a whole continent.
a whole continent from my memory.
unlike all other hyphenated americans
my hyphen is made of blood.
when africa says hello
my mouth is a heartbreak
because i have nothing in my tongue
to answer her.
i don't know how to say hello to my mother.

i am such a sensitive summer thing.

And i heard her say, 'you
are afraid of love. but
love is not afraid of you.

expect sadness
like
you expect rain.
both,
cleanse you.

your skin smells like light. i think you are the moon.

Yes. yes i do. have the right to be this lush and neverending.

The truth is
you were born for you.
you were wanted by you.
you came for you.
you are here for you.
your existence is yours.
yes.

I will always be a translation.

I knew you
before
i met you.
i've known you my whole life.

You travel to lush looted countries. parts of earth laying on their sides. barely breathing. hot with rust, infection, and tourist anemia. you and your camera arrive. start tearing at bodies with your lust. it's harmless. appreciating culture. sharing. honoring clothing. the way certain skin exists.

Sometimes
the beauty of my people
is
so
thick and intricate.
i spend days
trying
to undo my eyes
so
i can sleep.

We
softened. and broke. and kneeled over in pain. and sang. and threw ourselves against the walls. against each other. and hid. and caved. and opened. and tossed ourselves into work. and danced. and shrank. and closed. and ate. and bled. and held on. and ignored. and accepted. and lied. and laughed. and created. and undid. and drank. and drugged. and loved something. someone. somewhere. ourselves. fiercer. and hated. something. someone. somewhere. fiercer. and swam. and rejected. and yearned. and distanced. and clawed. and touched. and some of us will disown you. because you hurt too much. some of us will have to say your name for a year. before we are able to sleep.

i learned shukran. (thank you) first. shukran. (thank you) for this meal. shukran. (thank you) for making this for me. shukran. for everything. and in the midst of all of this. gratitude. la. (no) was lost. before. i ever found it. - the blunt force of gratitude

there is peaceful.
there is wild.
i am both at the same time.

apologize to your body.
maybe,
that's where the healing
begins.

stay is a sensitive word.
we wear
who stayed
and
who left
in our skin forever

when you allow that man. to walk through your children. plant his feet. in their veins. hold their voices. necks. bodies. inside his violence. you are no longer a mother. when you give him the key to that door. because you need to be loved by someone. you have seasoned them for the wolf. burned their childhood into a fantasy. it's going to take a third of their lives. all the courage. from their cells to their hair. to learn the alchemetic formula that turns that kind of betrayal. a demothering. soft. liveable. – before you get that key made

I will be lost and unlost, over
and over again, relax love. You
were meant to be this glorious.
Epic. Story.

They take no from our first breath. go back and return it to your mouth. your heart. your light.

poetry.
is the fire leaving my body.

When you meet that person. a person. one of your soulmates. let the connection. relationship be what it is. it may be five mins. five hours. five days. five months. five years. a lifetime. let it manifest itself, the way it is meant to. it has an organic destiny. this way if it stays or if it leaves, you will be softer from having been loved this authentically. souls come into, return, open, and sweep through your life for a myriad of reasons, let them be who and what they are meant.

I believe that everyone in the world.
has
one poem.
that is their soulmate.

the poem.
the one that is running through
your life.
pay attention.
to that poem.

eyes that commit. that is what I am looking for.

when you are struggling
in your
writing (art)
it usually means
you
are hearing one thing.
but writing (creating) another.

- honest | risk

he was so beautiful because when he held her he was not concerned with 'being a man.' 'being a man' had nothing to do with this. these flowers pouring from his chest. – weightless

Do not choose the lesser life. do you hear me. do you hear me. choose the life that is. yours. the life that is seducing your lungs. that is dripping down your chin.

I want to keep our body above water. you want to make us a fish. - fish

i have never understood.
will
probably never understand.
the white mans lust
to eat the world.
to eat the universe. (mars is next)
why he was born with such a rabid
starvation.
why he feigns for power
like
crack rock. doing everything. and anything.
to have it.
no matter how deranged.
why he is in so much pain
he needs to rip the roots of happiness
from the earth
and
burn them into
his smile.
what happened in his relationship with our mother.
that he needs to set a person on fire.
watch them burn.
to
feel powerful.
not every white man
is
born this way,
but,
it stands to remain
there are many
who
are.

the cure for apathy is memory.

i am a woman and a poem. – visceral

Never
trust anyone
who says
they do not see color.
this means
to them,
you are invisible.

There have been so many times
i have seen a man wanting to weep
but
instead
beat his heart until it was unconscious.

The thing you are most
afraid to write
Write that.

Your soul stained my shoulders. my whole life smells like you. this will take time. undoing you from my blood.

length of our love. she was your eyes the day i met you. remember, you and i.

you see how your body is beginning to slow glow with stars. you are remembering. you are mine. you have never been anything else.

Some words build houses in your throat. and they live there, content and on fire.

Chemistry is you touching my arm and it setting fire to my mind
Nayyirah Waheed

Just because someone desires you, it does not mean that they value you.
Read it over.
Again.
Let those words resonate in your mind.

Sometimes the night wakes in the middle of me. and i can do nothing but become the moon.

You are a story. do not become a word. one word. because you want to be loved. love does not ask you to be nothing for something.

water clings to my wrists. it has been my fragrance since birth.

Even the small poems mean something. they are often whales in the bodies of tiny fish.

There is a god in writing.
a soft. roaring. unconditional.
home of a god.
who prays to me.

she was a beautiful place to bare my legs.

It is being honest
about
my pain
that
makes me invincible.

all the women. in me. are tired.

as a woman i know the difference between appreciation and teeth. what really hurts is that as a girl i had to know the same thing.

you are not a mistake. you are too many exquisite details to be a mistake.

I do not expect my child's respect.
just because i have given birth to their life.
does not mean they owe me.
anything.
what i want most
is to look into my child's eyes
and
see
that i have given birth
to
a
heart.
have
honored.
held and feed.
someones
heart.
from the moment we first met.
and
they love me for it.

Grieve. so that you can be free to feel something else.

anger. is often grief that has been silent for too long.

If you deserve
honey
mine will flow from my arms to
yours
no effort, no asking.
but, if there is none
and
you feel wind instead.
know
that my spirit already
senses that
when you smell sweetness
you
begin harvesting blades in your
hands.
- kindness is a form of intelligence

If we must
both
be right.
we will
lose
each other.

soon
the moon will come from my lips
and
you will not remember your name. – oshún

you do not have to be a fire
for
every mountain blocking you.
you could be a water
and
soft river your way to freedom
too.

- options