Literature The Love Issue

Poem: Loves Me, Loves Me Not

“It is known that love is built on sacrifice”

By Hawra’a Ali

A gathering of roses sat in the garden

Patiently awaiting their death

Crying dew behind their petal curtain

Sighing into the air with their lovely perfumed breath

It is known that love is built on sacrifice

It is a lesson taught to everyone since childhood

The Rose, the teacher that will pay the price

That teaches the lesson only years later understood

Pick that lovely flower, it is yours to take

Make it forget its roots, tear it from its home

Ask it, what is love? Give it a little shake

And then through its soft petals let your fingers comb

It will tell you, with every bleeding red petal to the ground:

it is very easy to define love when we are young

But we forget that what goes around comes around

We only ask it, loves me, loves me not, pain and petals flung

We tore that Rose apart with almost vindictive pleasure

Perhaps it gave us a sense of control

To slowly tear off the petals with leisure

It didn’t matter how much we bruised the Rose’s soul

All that mattered is that we got our answer

We laughed with joy at loves me and groaned in despair at loves me not

We expressed many emotions, joy, fear, excitement and anger

We didn’t give the rose a second thought

We then skipped away, leaving the birds to hold a funeral for the corpse

Little did we realize that the now broken Rose is love

If we did, would we have shattered it? Who knows

Certainly not the mourning white dove

Years later we realize, it doesn’t matter if it is loves me or not,

The correct answer is that we mutilated life, to give it a meaning of our own

The true lesson that the Rose has valiantly taught

Is that love would blossom and bloom when left alone

We never stopped to think, that we happily clutched a petal

When we could have had a whole

We didn’t give the rose a second thoughtWe then skipped away, leaving the birds to hold a funeral for the corpse


Hawra’a Ali is a 21-year-old Kuwaiti student and a lover of literature.

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