By Nia Mahmud
That’s the thing about love: it feels like a new poem to write every time. Knocks at my dorm room door, staying up to see the ways the moon changes. As if we can’t recognize the phases. If this is me wasting away: call me a dumpster fire. A wasteland. I would lie down belly-up on this yellowish carpeting until the meteor strikes. Until I stand and the world spins. Uncertain on my feet but certain in some constants: coffee the way I like it, incessant laughter, compliments offered to the trees. What I mean is when everything shifts back into place, I’ll be glad I was here. What a marvel: the mundanity that makes up a life. And maybe it’s not love in the way most people think about it. But what would you call it? Spilling my guts and saying I’ll no longer call myself full at crumbs of affection. New friends sitting with babbled secrets. The kind that begs the question, the scrunched eyebrows, the earnest whisper: am I enough? The answer is yes. It was always yes.
Nia Mahmud (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection ‘a complete work in progress’ and has
been published by Unfiltered Magazine, Unpublished Magazine, The Same Faces Collective, and
Potted Purple Magazine. Find her on Instagram at @nia.m.writer
Hot Pot Magazine 