I say
I barely know him,
Hoping no one
Peeks into my head,
Because in there
We are living a lifetime together.

-

It was the time to smile again
Smile like that
Irrevocably hopeless
Letting go
Beyond my wishes way
But still smile and look at your way
Watching you leave
Following you with my eyes
Till you are out of vicinity
And keep watching the blank space
after you
Kind of way.
It was the time,
To smile the
I have given up on you way.
The I won’t stop if you leave way.
Accepting we were never meant to be way.
— % &Oh how different was this smile
From the time I saw you for the first time,
Struggling to finish the crossaint you bought
But hated.
Crumbs of it all over your face,
One dangling from your lower lip,
Few from your lightly grown beard,
Others falling on your vest.
You looked at me
And unaware of the mess, said hi.
It was my eyes that made you aware of the mess.
Embarrassed, you ran your fingers through your hair,
Smiled as if caught,
And I smiled as if
it was the most enchanting thing.
Since the day
I smiled at your every ‘hey’,
At your wins, at your jokes,
At your witty responses,
At your embrace,
At your smile.
Oh how different was these smile
From the one I am smiling today.— % &

-

What could be the use of the grudge
You held against him
All this time,
When these are the final moments he will last?

What could be the use of the hurt
You reminded yourself everytime,
At his every attempt to smile at you,
After he gets lost in oblivion?

What could an apology mean
When you receive it years later,
But he may not make it a day past it?
Is it an apology too late,
Just in time
Or not an apology at all?

What is an apology without a time to forgive at all?

-

There was something about her smile,
A smile that reached her eyes,
Not in a jolly way,
But through something much deeper,
In a sad but wise way.
As if she knew what he was feeling,
She has been through it all.
A smile like that could be infectious.
It can make one feel seen and understood.
And this exactly happened to him.
It made him wanting to say more,
Be understood a little more.
And just like that
Her sad wise smile
Took him over in a way,
That it would take him forever
To get out of it,
To forget it ever.

-

Some of us are really trying to form a real connection,
But have lost the ability to do so.
We have been broken too many times,
Have been humiliated, scared and numbed,
But mostly have learnt the phrase too well-
'This too shall pass'.
It has taken away our will to hold on to
Anything but ourselves.
We have been wrong so many times,
That our ability to trust has dwindled.
We have mastered the art of pasting a smile on our face,
Sip pricey coffee and pose pretty,
But forgot the art of talking, of sharing, of being vulnerable.
We have gradually coiled in a shell,
And found such comfort there-
That fresh air now scares us.
And when someone wants to walk into this comfortable shell of ours,
We don't make space for them,
Rather we teach them how to build one-
For themselves.
None of us ever chose this,
None of us like this either,
But life happened,
And it happened this way for some of us.

-

Some of us
Have lived a life of
So many highs and lows,
That our own life story
Becomes the inspiration we need
To survive the next wave.

-

Somewhere the problem are the happy endings
That we got so used to
Through the stories we read,
The movies we watched.
It never prepared us for the unexpected ones.
The ones where the loved ones did not stay,
Didn't return with big gestures,
The ones where they moved on,
And never looked back.


(Continued in page 2)— % &They only told us about the one story that worked out,
And not the hundred ones that failed.
Somewhere our writers let go of that pain.
I say bring in those half finished stories,
Bring in the burnt of it,
The half lit passion,
The tears, the toll-


When in life it only ends with death,
Why should the stories end in happy embrace?— % &

-

And suddenly one day
It becomes all about yourself.
The urge to fix everyone around you dies down.
The need to find yourself takes its place.
Your depth, your boundaries,
Your strength, your endurance,
Things about yourself that you love,
And becoming the version of yourself
That you admire the most.
You push yourself for little more everyday,
To excel in the things you want to be good at.

It is at this juncture,
Your health improves, stability peaks,
And the shield around your heart strengthens.
You become invincible.
What can anyone take away from you
When everything you have is soon going to be yesterday?
And tomorrow-
Tomorrow you are just going to be better than today.
It is when the story of your life resets.
The spotlight shifts on you,
And you tell the story of that one in a million,
who managed to find the way back to themselves.

-

Life felt like a 9
Until a look in your eye.
It was all about
Strength of my winning bouts,
As I went around,
Hanging my medals in the crowd.

Life felt like a 9
Until I saw you smile,
It was a story of dreams,
Some achieved
While others were thrown into the bins.
— % &And then one day
While in the park,
You turned around to see,
If I could jump off the fallen tree,
Sensing my nerves
You lent your hand,
And I took a leap,
Trusting your grip.
I landed safe,
Under your protective gaze;
And life became a 10,
As I looked in your eye,
Smiled seeing you smile.

Life felt like a 9
Until the moment
Knocked on the heart.
Guess it was never about wins at all. — % &

-

Sometimes I fail to understand
How we started romanticizing
Speaking our hearts out;

In real life,
The harsh truth the heart holds,
Only hurts if told.
Only breaks people apart,
Distance and guilt,
It's recipe for a melancholic art.— % &If the world is not built of people
Who can listen,
Then why do they say
That this world is for people
Who let out their heart's content?
— % &

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