Short Poems – Nayyirah Waheed

To read a bit more inspiring poetry by Nayyirah Waheed click here.

Damn good people.

Christmas party.

YOLO.

Then change it.

A breath of reality.

The further she swims the more freedom she feels. An uplifting accomplishment, escaping reality and diving into an unknown world. A world she can make her own. A world that only exists in her mind. The water lifts her limbs, makes her weightless. It makes her free.

She holds her breathe, so deep and for so long she can feel it in her gut. As soon as the feeling moves through her body to her head, the need for air becomes present. She kicks a bit faster and makes her way to the surface. Popping up and taking in one giant breathe of fresh seaside air. The salty water runs into her eyes and burns. The waves whip at her face. The wind blows into her ears. If only she never needed to come up for air. If only she could live beneath the surface of the water, where it remains calm and silent and still; where she floats so easily, without strain or urgency.

Life is difficult. It requires so much from us. It hacks at our senses when all we want to do is float. But life is our reality, it is what we live. Life might be tough, but it’s a better option than death. So we kick our feet, we swim to the surface, we breathe in air, we face reality. We try our best not to drown. The bottom of the ocean is a beautiful escape. But people cannot live in at the bottom of the ocean.

New Leaves!

Life is unpredictable,

It changes with the seasons,

Even your coldest winter,

Happens for the best of reasons.

And though it  feels eternal,

Like all you’ll ever do is freeze.

I promise Spring is coming,

And with it, brand new leaves.

~ e.h

The vocabulary extender:

They say I’m going mad.

“I wear the universe backwards. I imagine putting stars in my coffee and sugar in the sky. I imagine going fishing in the clouds, and watching the sun hide behind lakes. I’m too busy dancing with my imagination to even tip toe with reality for a second.

They say I’m going mad. They’re right.”

~ D Antoinette Foy

With my head in the flowers.

I’ve always had an appreciation for beautiful photography. I never imagined though that I would end up being the one photographed. Just a few weeks ago, I went out with a friend to have some drinks with his work colleagues. Since moving to a new city, I’ve found that this is the best way of catching some great opportunities – interacting with like-minded people, while getting drunk. I’m convinced, liquid courage is the lifeblood of opportunity. On walking into the bar, I was welcomed by happy people. They were all creatives in my field of work, so as the conversation flowed so did doses of encouraging advise and gems of wisdom from their experience of being a newbie to Amsterdam. Amongst the beautiful crowd I nestled in, I met a photographer. Her name was Mariana and she was in the same boat as me – far away from home, trying to make it work in another city. She’s from Portugal and could’t speak much English, so our conversation remained limited. In between the broken sentences and mispronounced words, she told me how she’s been struggling to find stable work in photography. She showed me her online portfolio – I was blown away. This girl is seriously talented! Mariana suggested that with all my free time (currently unemployed) I should model for her. She needed a girl to fill in for a no-show, as she had some additional portfolio work she needed to do. Of all things, I never thought that I would move to Amsterdam and become a model. Well, a one-time model at least. Flattered, I agreed. A few days later I went over to her house and after a few cups of coffee and some chit chat, we got started. She had recently started a side business of making and selling flower crowns. She had a variety of crowns, assembled from beautiful flowers and leaves made from soft material and plastic, all bound together in a rustic fashion with some thin brown rope. She needed each crown to be shot, as a catalogue piece and to add to her growing online portfolio. In the beginning I felt very stiff and awkward, but as the shoot progressed I started feeling more at home in from of the camera. And I couldn’t be more happy with the results that followed.

To view the rest of Mariana’s portfolio and more photographs from my shoot click here.