Best Poems Written by Anup Dahal

And yet, love remained

What is love, thou ask’st, with lips like petals pressed in doubt?
Is it a whisper in the dark, or something souls can live without?
Nay love is not perfume in the air,
But the scent of rain on burnt letters,
The musk of a pillow that still holds her hair.

It is not the flame in a lover’s eye,
But the warmth in a bowl of soup a mother serves at midnight,
When no one sees,
When silence sleeps on the couch beside you.

Love is the anchor in a stormy sea,
The phoenix that claws its way from ash,
Bleeding wings reborn just to protect the same fire that killed it.
It is the bruise a father kisses in his son’s failure,
The sob he swallows behind a proud smile,
And the dust on his shoes from chasing dreams not his own.

Love walks barefoot across shattered glass,
Not to be heroic,
But because someone else might bleed if it doesn’t.

It is the prayer of the forgotten,
The gold thread in a widow’s shawl,
Stitched from memories of a voice that now lives only in tea-time silence.

Sometimes it is rage restrained,
Sometimes,
The joy of watching someone you love fall in love with someone else,
And still hoping they’re happy.

Love is not the words we write,
But the pauses we fear,
The messages we delete,
And the goodbyes we rehearse in dreams.

It is both sword and balm,
A garden that blossoms only if you're willing to bury your name beneath it.

So ask not what love is,
But feel it in the ache between two glances,
In the ghost of a heartbeat you carry for someone who forgot yours.

And if after all the fire, the silence, the surrender,
You still say,
"I’d do it again",
Then know this:

You have not merely loved,
You have become love.
And that is how it remains.

Copyright © Anup Dahal | Year Posted 2025