verse: to care

on when a gentleness of being overwhelms you.

Herein lies a most recent spoken-word piece, performed at the last Read Wedding Open Mic of 2025. I wanted to do it in one-take. I felt it deserved a rather unfiltered, unpolished energy, show up to this blank page as I am feeling these days. Drop a note below sharing yours (energy).

Wishing you a most peaceful entry into 2026, friend.

prelude

Jarbled mess of a nervous system—
Who can sustain this mountain of 
Always having something to say?
A river flowing to nowhere in 
Particular, always gushing, loud,
Pretentious, somewhat
Grounded, giving
I do not nor do I pretend 
To know
What.

Relentless in caring.

...

To care.

I am the slow kind of lover.
Take my time to notice how one
Enjoys someone seeping through 
Their cracks; coating one’s insides
With all the comfortable heat of a 
Kind, gentle and passionate
Lover.
I could fall in love too soon, for most
People’s comfort, it’s true.
To love is to see, to witness, 
To choose—I may choose you
Too quickly.
Give me a quest, and I’m likely 
to chase it. I will follow through, 
to the ends of the Earth if I have to, 
just to prove that if they really 
wanted to, they could.

I would.

Halfway across this journey,
I’d realize they never did;
The ones I used to choose, 
Tend to choose
Differently, or better yet—
Themselves.
And sometimes I say,
As perhaps we all should.
I’d realize, did I ever
realize whom I chose before
I felt the weight of contempt
festering in the wounds of 
an honest mistake?
Needs unmet, love poured 
into cracked cups,
spilling, overflowing,
lack of intent masked as 
overwhelm—honey, 
I’ve been there,
I’ve done that… 
Let’s please, stop, 
and let me

Be honest.

I really want to
Get to know you, 
Get to see if I
Actually really like you?
My rose-tinted glasses a 
Disease of the blind eye trained
To believe in this made-up reality
It provided someone comfort, 
once, in my lifetime and
It was enough—
I have made it my 
mission to prove
People are worth it.
I’ve done my due diligence,
My time in service of those who
Wouldn’t be bothered to notice.
Burnt myself just to feel closer 
to the sun, but the sun, 
my child, she’s not
Been born out of me yet.

Listen—

I am a hopeless romantic.
An individual who loves to
Love you—truly, I do—but
My sense of safety is evolving by the
Minute. You see when your first
Memory starts in a war it suspends
The world like in a vacuum, in
Permanent expansion,
Everyone seems to be evolving
beyond recognition, in seconds,
meanwhile you operate with a central
Nervous system of your ancestral lizards
So you reach your hand to touch
Me and I struggle to comprehend
Your intention—be very clear with me,
Be very specific, be brave enough
To tell me because mine is an 
Instinct designed to protect itself
By assuming neutrality,
At best.
Be brave and you will have
Earned my respect.

Do you understand?

And really what does it mean 
to thrive, anyway?
Whomever for?
The world moves fast
But I, you, we have all witnessed, 
it all could have ended
In a matter of someone’s 
more powerful choice,
And here we are, 
and it’s magic.
Made it to this moment 
where you and I, get
To explore toxicities
We were bred through.
You see this resilience of mine
is an armour I’m not 
proud of;
Built for environments I 
want to unsubscribe from
I want to teach myself safety,

ooo more hej.

I want to teach myself to present
Myself in all this messy sincerity

ooo ti njeriiii~

I have nothing to hide if
You would not avert your eyes 
In the discomfort of vulnerability
I am—an open book.
So go ahead,
Flip me.

Hajde de...

I want to teach myself to be
For the love of
Joy, bre,
Teach myself the blessing 
of complete surrender, bre,
Of separating from the 
outcome whatever
Comes, let it arrive, 

ooo ti.

I want to be a body of water 
gushing from the depths of 
my rugged mountains, the river 
slowly making its bed right 
through its center until it 
gives way, I want to 
remember, I was the 
child who ran up 
the canyon millions of years 
after, seeking to make sense 
of themselves, to remember,
dipping their toes in icy waters,
wondering where we’ve all come from,
and why some us fall in 
love too quickly,
and some went mad with 
rage.

I want to be the wind 
caressing that child’s hair 
carrying a whisper of a 
thousand mothers
That tell it—to stay.

And still,
with the love of 
a thousand mothers 
push its sail out to 
safer planes
Anyway.

Dashni,

Bubamarrë

p.s.: In Albanian, we make use of interjections, or as we call them pasthirrma. The “ooo”, “bre”, “hajde de”, are all ways in which you would call to focus someone’s attention, but also emphasize the meaning of the words said.