Najaha Nauf > Quotes

“I want to look at him and think, 'I'd burn cities to keep you warm', better yet I want to think, 'I'd plant forests to keep you alive'.”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“Remember, Tori, not all of us burn. Some of us simply break and rebuild.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“Everyone deals with life differently and that's okay. Some of us build, some of us burn. In the end, we are all just trying to survive, aren't we?”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“Words are heavy
and they take up space.
My body is burdened under their weight.”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“Is it destiny that I'm writing to you when there's so many people I could be writing to?”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“most often I am running away from my comfort in fear of being complicit / if I stay still / I am surrendering to the fate of every woman before me / if I run / I will lose sight of what's important to me.”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“only melancholy has its dedicated following: everyone loves a good sob story every now and then.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“There's a semblance of comfort that comes with sharing your story with a stranger.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“If you stay away from something long enough, it stops meaning the same to you.

Distance, Victoria thinks, makes the heart grow fonder of memories and feelings. Distance makes you forget the person, even if they stand in front of you screaming.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“Sometimes, I have so much to say, I don't know where these words come from, or where they go.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“Some nights
the kitchen is haunted by your feet
and the ghosts of your tears,
you look at the grill lining the window
and grieve
for open skies
open arms
a childhood still out of reach.”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“I'm sorry," you wrote in a diary I discovered at 11, "I'm sorry I did this to you."

But how could you have known that sorrow has a way with the womb? How could you have known that blood left scars that ran deeper than love could ever heal?”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“I like picking open old wounds just to see if they're still there. Something about pain is more familiar than love has ever been.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“On days when I am still and quiet, I want her to remember that the real war wages on the inside.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“Sometimes I wish we could choose our own names, that way we could all carry something of our own, childishly our own, forever.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars

“A treacherous cycle of forgetting. Still, when she says, "next time, we'll have more time to hang out", I know she means to say, "I'll continue to miss you far longer than I've known you",”
― Najaha Nauf, October Defined: an anthology of verse

“How do you console someone who doesn't want to be consoled? Sammy says to do it subtly, but I have never been subtle. If anything, I am obvious: I fill rooms and suffocate people with my presence, skin pressed up on all fall walls until you know nothing but me.”
― Najaha Nauf, Slow Dancing with The Stars