I remember God on the family tree.

My heart,
Is a jigsaw puzzle composed of
Pieces of souvenirs from wherever
Life has taken me

Sunny mounts of happiness,
Dark troughs of gloom,
Blind alleys of secret memories

Punched out remains
Of the parts that I gifted to
Those special few

Uneven buds added on
To the surface, because some gave me
Pieces of their hearts too

Marks of where it was trodden on,
Scars that show its
Brave, healed face

With pins of guilt and remorse
Studding it in memory of how
It also became the cause of others' pain

That's my heart. Not so pretty,
Not perfect, not pure,
Yet it sits in my chest, beating away
Patiently, as if entirely sure
That any moment, its wait will end
Of someone who'll admiringly
Imbibe all of its stories,
Ease away all the tense knots,
View in awe all its glories

And let its inadequacies depart,
Completing them with closeness-
Smoothening their unevenness-
By merging with them,
Heart to heart

You stab me in the back with a knife,
and I apologize for bleeding on it.

Oh he's got such flair,
That khuda khair
One can't help but just stare...
**Unabashedly

For watching over me as the poet in me changed-

From deciding the subject of my next one
A week in advance,
And spending the next few days,
Creating the mood, the right ambience

To having words ready
At the tip of my fingers
To my life revolving around writing,
And not the reverse

From choosing the correct length
The right vocabulary, rushing through
A dictionary for just that word I needed

To being effortlessly able
To aimlessly babble
And in the end, smiling at how poetic
Were the verses I'd created

From wondering who would ever read me?

To feeling a warm, fuzzy glow,
Seeing the lit up yellow lightning
Giving the happy news that my ideas
Someone, somewhere, was absorbing

From having that secret desire of
The Dream Guy stumbling upon this page
Reading me in and out, and
Falling in love with my words before
He began to love me...

To... Oh! Who am I kidding
I still have faith in that fantasy!

To a million more poems,
To many more hearts to enthrall,
Cheers to poetry,
Cheers to y'all!

Hey! Did I just put on my best makeup
And my prettiest dress
Only to have you stare endlessly at
That one loose tress
Of mine and describe it as
"Exquisitely enchanting"?

*The blessed misfortunes of having
A True Blue Romantic darling

I admit
My initial fixation
Was with the idea of love,
All the clichés, the to-do's of love
But now,
You are the idea
You are the clichéd routine of
Chocolates and roses,
Love is no longer a mere emotion
You, now are its purest personification