POETRY: Love Language: VI by Alissar Nahhas

if it meant you felt loved, i would do it.
this is the sixth love language.
it is a feeling, rather.

it is happy and it is sad
and it is neither.
it is quite vermillion
with a mystery that cannot be
comprehended nor explained.

i will love you,
and you will be loved by me.
but i will not be loved by you.

the sixth love language is unrequited love,
yet my soul cannot love in another way.

you will be loved, by all means.
every love language, i will give to you.

i will cross the ends of the earth to service you
and craft one thousand paper cranes to gift you along the way.

when we meet, i will embrace you closer than the wind,
whisper words that only poets with eyes for you could unravel,
and watch the days and the nights pass by your eyes.

the sixth love language knows all too well how to love too much,
but my soul does not know how to love any less.

the sixth love language exists for you.
i am made to love you more than you could ever love me

vermillion is the color i’d paint my heart for you, if only you’d accept it.
it is a color that exists to catch one’s eye.
made to exist more than be acknowledged

please take my vermillion heart,
if not to hold, the color is at least pretty

the sixth love language, my soul, the color of vermillion, my heart;
it is happy and it is sad and it is neither.
it is a mystery that cannot easily be solved.

but with more than one language; i love you more, always <3


Alissar Nahhas (she/her) is a teen poet and member of The Imperfect Poets (T.I.P.) in the Inland Empire. She has been featured in both editions of the Teen Poet Laureate chapbook and cofounded The Imperfect Poets, an organization rooted in emphasizing what a poet is: human, imperfectly perfect. Her muses are the soul and philosophy of the universe. Nahhas’ poetry has been described as mellow and nostalgic, a comfort she hopes to radiate through her words and self-expression. Speaking of self-expression, she does so through her fashion and her willingness to connect herself with others.