More than enough

Your uncolored lips, your asymmetrical face

Your tousled hair, your body dimensions

They surely will not rate high beside photographed beauties

They may not be enough to rouse the man in me.

You voice in the shower

Your hands in the kitchen

They will not earn accolades and awards

They may be enough only for perfunctory praises from me.

Your in-the-background, soft-spoken ways

Your unbidden stream of apologies

They betrayed nothing of your yesterdays

They were not enough for me to see your wounds.

Your disguised smiles and laughter

The sighs you would hold back

They spoke little of the turmoil brewing in your soul

They were not enough for me to see how much you needed me.

It’s not that you were not enough

It’s not that you were nondescript where others sparkled

It’s not that I looked elsewhere for things absent in you

It might have been that lust overshadowed love that was for you.

It’s because I didn’t look deep enough

I didn’t care where your far-away gazes took you

I should have relished the hopeful twinkle in your eyes

And the earnestness of your arms around me.

It’s because I didn’t pay heed to your lips

Quivering with unrealized love

Whispering unsaid pleas to feel your heart

And if I had done so, I’d unhesitatingly love you back.

I foolishly took for granted

How you closed your eyes to my acts of unkindness

How your mere presence quieted my qualms

How your body glowed in our rare moments of oneness.

I didn’t  know love when it most mattered

It is my regrettable, unrecoverable loss 

That I failed to tell you when I could

That you were and always will be

More than enough for me! 

24 March