Eclipsed Hearts: A Ballad of Forbidden Teenage Love

Boy I Once Knew

My mind pinned to the present,
My heart pinned to the past.
Something familiar crawls up my spine,
The face who I once called mine.

Memories replay of the first day,
His voice echoes all the way.
from jittery hellos and short-term goodbyes,
To walking past each other like it were lies.

A condemn voice climbs my now frail brain,
Finding its way to murder seconds but not my ever-lasting pain.
I start to cry a river as I suffocate my pillow,
Extracting all the inanimate comfort I can, but it can never erase that first "hello".

I beseech to God to make me forget him,
But my soul aches to keep a part of him.
I wonder if I could've kept him if I fought my whole,
Somehow could've soaked the pain I endured, just to keep his rare soul.

I cannot recognize him these days,
He changed blindly in front of my face.
For the better or worse I cannot decide precisely,
For it was I who put him to misery,

I was the villain,
The one who everyone believed held the gun.
He was my victim.
But does it still make me a killer if I had no choice?

Even after 2 years, I fail to remind myself that I wasn't in guilt,
Rather it was the fault of the beliefs society built.
For they couldn't bare the idea of a muslim boy with a hindu girl but I-
I accepted it, alcohol to wound.

Minutes turn to days,days turn to months, months to years like a fool,
I try to assure myself that he was just a "boy I met at school".
As I am writing this 20 seats from him in the bus I first met him;
I realize, only I knew he wasn't just "a boy".

He was once all my aspects,
But for now, we are just strangers with each other's secrets.
Loving secretly.
With a loud silence.

I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't dropped my jacket that day.
Would we have still met in another life?
One where there are no rules to who should marry whom?
I feigned myself to sleep as I held hope to this thought.