Rupi Kaur Quotes

I had to leave
I was tired of allowing you make me feel anything less than whole.

there is a list of questions
i want to ask but never will
there is a list of questions
i go through in my head
every time i'm alone
and my mind can't stop itself from searching for you
there is a list of questions i want to ask
so if you're listening somewhere
here i am asking them

what do you think happens
to the love that's left behind
when two lovers leave
how blue do you think it gets
before it passes away
does it pass away
or does it still exist somewhere
waiting for us to come back
when we lied to ourselves by
calling this unconditional and left
which one of us hurt more
i shattered into a million little pieces
and those pieces shattered into a million more
crumbled into dust till
there was nothing left of me but the silence

tell me how love
how did the grieving feel for you
how did the mourning hurt
how did you peel your eyes open after every blink
knowing i'd never be there staring back

it must be hard to live with what ifs
there must always be this constant dull aching
in the pit of your stomach
trust me
i feel it too
how in the world did we get here
how did we live through it
and how are we still living

how many months did it take
before you stopped thinking of me
or are you still thinking of me
cause if you are
then maybe i am too
thin

there are mountains growing
beneath our feet
that cannot be contained
all we've endured
has prepared us for this
bring your hammer and fists
we have a glass ceiling to shatter

he only whispers i love you as he slips his hands down the waistband of your pants. this is where you must understand the difference between want and need - you may want that boy but you certainly don't need him

of course i want to be successful
but i don't crave success for me
i need to be successful to gain
enough milk and honey
to help those around
me succeed

my god
is not as unreachable as
they'd like you to think
my god is beating inside us infinitely

sometimes
the apology
never comes
when it is wanted

and when it comes
it is neither wanted
nor needed

-you are too late

when my mother opens her mouth to have a conversation at dinner my father shoves the word hush between her lips and tells her to never speak with her mouth full this is how the women in my family learned to live with their mouths closed

when snow falls
i long for grass
when grass grows
i walk all over it
when leaves change colour
i beg for flowers
when flowers bloom
i pick them
- unappreciative

i need someone
who knows struggle
as well as i do
someone
willing to hold my feet in their lap
on days it is too difficult to stand
the type of person who gives
exactly what i need
before i even know i need it
the type of lover who hears me
even when i do not speak
is the type of understanding
i demand

- the type of lover i need

what if we get to their doors and they slam them shut i ask what are doors she says when we've escaped the belly of the beast

people say things
meant to rip you in half
but you hold the power to not
turn their words into a knife
and cut yourself

I understand this world broke you. It has been so hard on your feet. I don't blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. Sometimes I stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you'll never care to mention. I come from the same aching blood. From the same bone so desperate for attention I collapse in on myself. I am your daughter. I know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. Cause it's the only way I know how to tell you.

I've had sex, she said
But I don't know
What making love
Feels like

something about the phrase - something about
how i have to be unlike the women
i call sisters in order to be wanted
makes me want to spit your tongue out

the night after you left
i woke up so broken
the only place to put the pieces
were the bags under my eyes

you were so afraid
of my voice
i decided to be
afraid of it too

we have been dying
since we got here
and forget to enjoy the view

- live fully

we're like fingers on
thorns honey. we know exactly where it hurts.

The road to changing the world
Is never-ending
--pace yourself

you look at me and cry
everything hurts

i hold you and whisper
but everything can heal

what i miss most is how you loved me. but what i didn't know was how you loved me had so much to do with the person i was. it was a reflection of everything i gave you. coming back to me. how did i not see that. how. did i sit here soaking in the idea that no one else would love me that way. when it was i that taught you. when it was i that showed you how to fill. the way i needed to be filled. how cruel i was to myself. giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it. thinking it was you who gave me strength. wit. beauty. simply because you recognized it. as if i was already not these things before i met you. as if i did not remain all these things after you left.

we need more love
not from men
but from ourselves
and each other

they have no idea what it's like
to lose home at the risk of
never finding home again
to have your entire life
split between two lands and
become the bridge between two countries

Your voice alone drives me to tears.

The thing about writing is I can't tell if it's healing or destroying me.

i am sending my love to your eyes. may they always see goodness in people. and may you always practice kindness. may we see each other as one. may we be nothing short of in love with everything the universe has to offer. and may we always stay grounded. rooted. our feet planted firmly onto the earth.

The year is done. I spread the past three hundred sixty-five days before me on the living room carpet. Here is the month I decided to shed everything not deeply committed to my dreams. The day I refused to be a victim to the self-pity. Here is the week I slept in the garden. The spring I wrung the self-doubt by its neck. Hung your kindness up. Took down the calendar. The week I danced so hard my heart learned to float above water again. The summer I unscrewed all the mirrors from their walls. No longer needed to see myself to feel seen. Combed the weight out of my hair. I fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. Draw the match. Cremate the unnecessary. The light of the fire warms my toes. I pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for january. Here I go. Stronger and wiser into the new.

I am the product of all the ancestors getting together and deciding these stories need to be told

how is it so easy for you
to be kind to people he askedmilk and honey dripped
from my lips as i answered cause people have not
been kind to me

love will come
and when love comes
love will hold you
love will call your name
and you will melt
sometimes though
love will hurt you but
love will never mean to
love will play no games
cause love knows life
has been hard enough already

that is the thing about selfish people. they gamble entire beings. entire souls to please their own.

the way you speak of yourself
the way you degrade yourself
into smallness
is abuse

-self-harm

this place makes me
the kind of exhausted that has
nothing to do with sleep
and everything to do with
the people around me

you treat them like they
have a heart like yours
but not everyone can be as
soft and as tender

you don't see the
person they are
you see the person
they have the potential to be

you give and give till
they pull everything out of you
and leave you empty.

I'd be lying if I said
you make me speechless
the truth is you make my
tongue so weak it forgets
what language to speak in.

yesterday
when I woke up
the sun fell to the ground and rolled away
flowers beheaded themselves
all that's left alive here is me
and I barely feel like living

- depression is a shadow living inside me

i am
made of water
of course i am emotional

perhaps the saddest of all
are those who live waiting
for someone they're not
sure exists

every time you tell your daughter you yell at her out of love you teach her to confuse anger with kindness which seems like a good idea till she grows up to trust men who hurt her cause they look so much like you - to fathers with daughters

my voice
is the offspring
of two countries colliding
what is there to be ashamed of
if english
and my mother tongue
made love
my voice
is her father's words
and mother's accent
what does it matter if
my mouth carries two worlds

- accent

the day you have everything
i hope you remember
when you had nothing

your body is a museum of natural disasters can you grasp how stunning that is

you were the most beautiful thing i'd ever felt till now. and i was convinced you'd remain the most beautiful thing i'd ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i'd experienced the most exhilarating person i'd ever meet. how i'd spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i'd tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.

- falsehood

you are snakeskin
and i keep shedding you somehow
my mind is forgetting
every exquisite detail
of your face
the letting go has
become the forgetting
which is the most
pleasant and the saddest thing
to have happened

don't mistake
salt for sugar
if he wants to
be with you
he will
it's that simple

isn't it such a tragic thing. when you can see it so clearly but the other person doesn't.

yes
it is possible
to hate and love someone
at the same time
i do it to myself
every day

when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it

so how dare you mock your mother when she opens her mouth and broken english spills out / don't be ashamed of the fact that she split through countries to be here so you wouldn't have to cross a shoreline

baby lick me. like your mouth has the gift of reading and i'm your favorite book.

the necessity to protect you
overcame me
i love you too much
to remain quiet as you weep
watch me rise to kiss the poison
out of you
i will resist the temptation
of my tired feet
and keep marching
with tomorrow in one hand
and a fist in theother
i will carry you to freedom

- love letter to the world

i am nothing/ i am nothing/ i am nothing

I came all this way to give you all these things but you aren't even looking.

you leave
but you don't stay gone
why do you do that
why do you
abandon the thing you want to keep
why do you linger
in a place you do not want to stay
why do you think it's okay to do both
go and return all at once

You might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant.

if I am the longest relationship
of my life
isn't it time to
nurture intimacy
and love
with the person
I lie in bed with each night

you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not

Upon my birth
My mother said
There is a god in you
Can you feel her dancing

what is it with you and sunflowers he asks

i point to the field of yellow outside
sunflowers worship the sun i tell him
only when it arrives do they rise
when the sun leaves
they bow their heads in mourning
that is what the sun does to those flowers
it's what you do to me

- the sun and her flowers

if you were born with
the weakness to fall
you were born with
the strength to rise

you must enter a relationship with yourself before anyone else

it takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them

on days
like this
i need you to
run your fingers
through my hair
and speak softly

- you

love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it's just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don't
love is fighting out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing whom to choose

you move my hand
between my legs
and whisper
make those pretty little fingers dance for me

she is not a porn category
or the type you look for
on a friday night
she is not needy or easy or weak
-daddy issues is not a punch line

when the moon rises on this coast
but the sun still burns shamelessly on yours
i crumble knowing even our skies are different
- long distance

I love that about us
how capable we are of feeling
how unafraid we are of breaking
and tend to our wounds with grace
just being a woman
calling myself
a woman
makes me utterly whole
and complete

i even tried to bury myself alive
but the dirt recoiled
you have already rotted it said
there is nothing left for me to do

you pinned
my legs to
the ground
with your feet
and demanded
i stand up

trying to convince myself
i am allowed
to take up space
is like writing with
my left hand
when i was born
to use my right

-the idea shrinking is hereditary

i am learning how to love him by loving myself

neither of us is happy
but neither of us wants to leave
so we keep breaking one another
and calling it love

sometimes
i stop myself from
saying the words out loud
as if leaving my mouth too often
might wear them down

-i love you

it is your blood
in my veins
tell me how i'm
supposed to forget

i reached for the last bouquet of flowers you gave me now wilting in their vase one by one i popped their heads off and ate them

you've touched me
without even
touching me.

my heart aches for sisters more than anything
it aches for women helping women
like flowers ache for spring

the rape will
tear you
in half

but it
will not
end you

it means nothing to me if he loves you if he can't do a single wretched thing about it

trust your body
it reacts to right and wrong
better than your mind does
- it is speaking to you

bloom beautifully
dangerously
loudly
bloom softly
however you need
just bloom

eyes like almonds deeply hooded with conviction

learning to not envy
someone else's blessings
is what grace looks like

my issue with what they consider beautiful is their concept of beauty

i didn't know why
i split myself open
for other knowing
sewing myself up
hurts this much
afterward

i am not a hotel room. i am home
i am not the whiskey you want
i am the water you need
don't come here with expectations
and try to make a vacation out of me

nothing is safer
than the sound of you
reading out loud to me

-the perfect date

You tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but I was not made with a fire in my belly so I could be put out I was not made with a lightness on my tongue so I could be easy to swallow I was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow.

love is knowing whom to choose

but did it matter
if the thing was dead
when at the very least
i had it

- addiction

what love looks like

what does love look like the therapist asks
one week after the breakup
and i'm not sure how to answer her question
except for the fact that i thought love
looked so much like you

that's when it hit me
and i realized how naive i had been
to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person
as if anybody on this entire earth
could encompass all love represented
as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for
would look like a five foot eleven
medium-sized brown-skinned guy
who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast

what does love look like the therapist asks again
this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence
and at this point i'm about to get up
and walk right out the door
except i paid too much money for this hour
so instead i take a piercing look at her
the way you look at someone
when you're about to hand it to them
lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation
eyes digging deeply into theirs
searching for all the weak spots
they have hidden somewhere
hair being tucked behind the ears
as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation
on the philosophies or rather disappointments
of what love looks like

well i tell her
i don't think love is him anymore
if love was him
he would be here wouldn't he
if he was the one for me
wouldn'

i hardened under the last loss. it took something human out of me. i used to be so deeply emotional i'd crumble on demand. but now the water has made its exit. of course i care about the ones around me. i'm just struggling to show it. a wall is getting in the way. i used to dream of being so strong nothing could shake me. now. i am. so strong. that nothing shakes me. and all i dream is to soften.
- numbness

It is a blessing to be the color of earth
do you know how often flowers confuse me for home

i will tell you about selfish people. even when they know they will hurt you they walk into your life to taste you because you are the type of being they don't want to miss out on. you are too much shine to not be felt. so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer. when they have taken your skin your hair and your secrets with them. when they realize how real this is. how much of a storm you are and it hits them.

that is when the cowardice sets in. that is when the person you thought they were is replaced by the sad reality of what they are. that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me.

you will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob. asking them why they did it. why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they'll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all.

but that isn't romantic. it isn't sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence they had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren't the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you.

when my mother was pregnant with her second child i was four i pointed at her swollen belly confused at how my mother had gotten so big in such little time my father scooped me in his tree trunk arms and said the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman's body it's where life comes from and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see the entire universe rested at my mother's feet

our work should equip
the next generation of women
to outdo us in every field
this is the legacy we'll leave behind

-progress

you must have known you were wrong when your fingers were dipped inside me searching for honey that would not come for you

I will welcome
A partner
Who is my equal