I was glancing sideways when my eyes caught you, I told to myself, “You
have your picks” you were so perfect like a classic portrait displayed in
a museum, a frail mirror revived at its subtlest; thus are driven
ravishing, a portrait lost in the sea.

That's when I found you, just someone I acknowledge. We stroll past each other, thought of
something, typical. Little did I realize, the man so stiff, when he sits wearing some thick eyeglasses; a strange passion, that's when I grasped, I will write you. And when I can't hit any key when I sing, in Minor D I run. You were a brooding light, a faint kiss of sweet melody ringing in my piano keys. When I sing, you sit there in silence and I speak the words and you listen to the tone.

For the first time, a man I know nothing at all, just a civil smile you put on to some pictures, I noticed you were 'something', seen. In nights where no stars appearing, when the moon was sheltering behind the mists, when the midnight so deep appeals bleaker than I expected — isn't it shameful that I figure out of how alluring that grin of yours, while I look at myself, and see,

that we will never cut across the same route, to reach through something remarkable? That I feel this electricity inside, while yours are just functioning?

The Infirmity of Life, I guess.

I posted a picture on the internet today,
after handpicking the best of all.
While she is left with no choices,
so she walks on the roads that burn
carrying herself upon her feet that bleed.

I took my camera and checked up the lighting,
as I wanted the picture to look 'natural' and 'candid'.
A cameraman rushes to her to click a picture
as he is a magazine photographer searching for stories real.

I sweated and protested about the scorching heat
while I set up my camera.
She wipes the sweat off her father's forehead
on which the glabellar lines cease to exist,
while hers is carrying the roots and branches of it.

I held books in my hand to strike a pose
as my fingers laid in front,
whose nails I painted yellow for this summer.
She holds the handlebars of her bicycle she can no more hold or paddle,
her nails have painted themselves with the colour of mud.

I clicked too many pictures for me to count or recall.
Even after thousands, she remembered how many miles is home.


I captioned my picture
'No more lonely quarantine',
She hardly knows alphabets or words to even ask for help.

I swiped from filter to filter
selecting an 'aesthetic' one.
She drinks the pitch-black liquid,
they tell her is water,
without even demanding for 'cleaner' one.

I finally edited and made a perfect picture,
with my wide grin sealed with a gloss,
And the cameraman too asks for her to smile for once.
She with her deserted lips forms a curve that makes the cameraman frown.

He deletes the picture from his camera
as it would be disliked by all,
It got 1.9k likes,
The picture I posted on the internet today.