At Heart’s Door

By Abdul Aleem Jaseer

Done and dusted,

with the ghosts of my past,

in the present I live now,

the same face, a different mask.

One more hopeful, yet still entwined,

with quiet curses left behind.

Under, yet never over their pain,

I stumble across an abandoned heath.

One dry, yet florally filled,

to such extent of monotone beauty,

I sat and observed each,

never growing tired of the rose or the lily.

Slowly, I spilled onto it rain,

rains of joy, love, life and sorrow

and so your heath came to.

I'd wished for no morrow.

For beneath the parallel of life's cycle,

it was all a single day,

one of many dawns, dusks,

morns and nights.

Yet it grips me,

possibility's rigid whisper,

for what if you were a cold flame?

And I was nothing, but a mere spark, unnamed.

I know my hours are numbered,

I know the wind that blows without direction,

I know the frost that breaks brittle,

yet, there's no place I'd ever rather be.

I'd spend all my hours that don't matter,

this aimless breeze I would shatter,

this frost I'd break into white from blue,

if it meant, I could have one more hour with you.

It stands now,

a door I'd built to eternity and you.

I'd bled my heart out onto your heath,

so tell me, had I dreamt true?

Even if it was never so,

and you hated me, to the core.

As much as it pains, that's no matter,

I'd always be there, former or latter.

This love I swear, bane or boon,

mine or yours I shall never rue.

For I swear again, on the waning moon,

I love you and I'll always do.

By Abdul Aleem Jaseer