I love this city
its chaos, its cracked lungs,
its bricks that remember more than people do.
Even the pollution feels like home.

But the man next to me wants to eat me alive
because he saw my hand.
Just a hand.
Nothing more.
Yet it’s enough to make him think he owns me.

Thousands of rapes
no one whispers.
But you always know the ******
long before you ever hear the victim speak.

They sell my Prophet’s name
in plastic wrappers,
swing it like a weapon.
The sermons shorter than your temper,
your cursing louder than your prayers.

You talk of God
as if He’s yours to guard.
But the God I know
forgives His children
a thousand times
before raising His voice.

And still, I love every corner of this city.
Even the dirt, even the blood,
even the silence.

Just not the breath of the man beside me,
breathing like he's God.

You saw me naked.
Completely. Undressed.
At midnight, probably, when the world was quiet and I wasn’t.
But tell me
how many stitches do I have on my left hand?
You saw skin
Not the naked truth
Can you undress me
without touching a single button?
Can you strip the shame from my spine,
the memory from my knees,
the fear from the corner of my mouth?

You can’t.
And you didn’t.
So don’t tell me you’ve seen me.

Love is irrational.
I’ve always been so calculated—
I know the exact number of steps it takes to reach the door,
The weight of every decision I make,
What I like to eat, what I wear,
How the smallest change can throw me off.
Even one spoon of sugar is too much
In my coffee,
Because I like it bitter,
I’ve always liked it bitter.

I still remember the sting of anger
When my mom bought me that red sweater,
How I felt the color clashed with me,
Made me feel ugly,
Made me feel exposed.
I calculated everything to keep the peace,
To avoid the discomfort of sharing space,
Of sharing myself.

But then I saw you.
And everything shifted.
I forgot about the coffee,
About the bitter taste I clung to.
The red sweater didn’t look so bad,
And suddenly I was dancing in a red dress,
Lost in the moment,
And I didn’t care.
I started adding sugar without a thought,
Without hesitation,
Without control.

For once, I stopped calculating,
Stopped measuring the risk.
With you, it was different.
I broke every rule I had set for myself,
Every condition I’d built to keep me safe.
Love, I realized, isn’t something you control.
It’s something that sweeps you up,
Unconditional,
Untamed,
And completely unplanned.

To find,
"Friends to lover" or "lover to friends"
I have set the red traffic light for hours
I have ink up every line on my palm
To find the crossover which could connect us
I made the invisible line called almost lover.