The Million Smiles You Owe Me

The jewels behind these eyelids

duck into the shadows

as these eyes close to reminisced

the thousand moments they agonized.

A girl's heart reveals in the passion

of unprecedented love and warmth,

in the smiles of the face she loves.

Alas! you never knew that I lived for that.

The ignorant heart and innocent lips

of mine must have broken

into the brightest of the smiles

when piqued by your semblance.

The silence of your sentiment,

the barricade round your thoughts

could never drive the entranced mind

of mine to retreat from loving you.

Shutting down the path to you,

muting off the space between us,

turning off the fervor in the gazes invoked

the tears in my eyes but not the ebb you desired.

The ground for your hatred and wrath

lies forsaken amidst your triads

for I've grown to relive

the life of mine with grace unforeseen.

The humility I writhed in your hands,

the banter of yours I braved,

the care of yours I perceived

will be afresh for eternity in my conscience.

The distance you spawned,

the silence you vowed,

the darkness you inflicted

might estrange you and me.

But the poetry that once stole your heart,

the same lines which I once voiced

and won your acclamation

will haunt you for eternity.

For the smiles that erupted at your sight

and the tears that flowed at your denial

will go round in circles and

return to phantom you.

The repercussion of my innocent faith in you

will remind you everyday of

the thousand smiles you owe me and

the million tears you account for.

A day might come when

this girl whom you belittled

as an embarrassment and slime

will be the reason you feel proud.

A day you would miss these

eyes that shone twice as bright for you,

heart that beat a hundred times faster for you,

the girl who loved a like never before the only you.

A day when you would wish to trace back

your steps towards me again, but

by then, the time would have moved on

and the space between us would be infinite.

The path towards me would be invisible

and so would the smiles my lips poured,

and on that day there would be

a heart on its funeral pyre.

Who knows whose heart that would be,

whether the reluctant one yours

that had a belated epiphany,

or the crying, distanced one of mine?

There are a billion moments

for us to look out and see,

to reach out and search,

to live and relive for our love...

-  Harini Krishna