It was not gold that caught my eyes,

 

Aadil Ghulam Bhat 

Poet and Author

 

 

I shut my heart behind a door,

And hid the little key away.

I told myself I needed no more,

And taught my heart to turn away.

O Love, you quiet, tender thief,

You came when I had ceased to care;

You slipped beneath my guarded grief

And left your little light in there.

You did not come with bells or flame,

Nor wake the sleeping world outside;

You came so softly, without a name,

And somehow made my silence wide.

It was not gold that caught my eyes,

Nor roses resting on your face;

It was the kindness in your eyes,

The quiet warmth of simple grace.

Your voice was rain upon the roof,

Your laughter woke the rooms in me;

Your eyes held something still and soft,

A place where I could simply be.

I listened more than words could say,

I watched the little things you do;

And love, that I had kept away,

Found quiet ways to lead me to you.

My walls grew weak beneath your light,

My locks forgot what locks were for;

The heart that feared the morning bright

Began to open up its door.

O Love, I ran, but you ran too;

I fled, yet still you followed near.

I thought I walked away from you,

But every road led back to you.

And now I know what I once missed:

The heart may hide, but love can see.

I thought I had escaped from love,

When love was simply finding me.

Let the old door open wide;

Let all the guarded silence cease.

For what I feared would steal my peace

Has become the place my heart finds peace.

I Thought You shone With Light.

Aadil Ghulam Bhat 
(Poet and Author)

 I called you fair; I thought you shone with light.

I trusted every promise in your eyes.

I named you spring before the winter came,

And crowned your silence with imagined skies.

I thought your heart was fashioned out of dawn,

A shrine where every gentler virtue stayed;

But every step I took toward your truth

Unveiled another shadow, deeper laid.

Your borrowed radiance fled before the day;

The mask of beauty could not bear the sun.

The star I praised dissolved into the void,

And all my faith was scattered, one by one.

I called you fair; I thought you shone with light.

Yet all I found was endless, faithless night—

As dark as hell itself could ever be,

As dark as night, devoid of light to me.

Fickle Fortune

 

Aadil Gulam Bhat 

Poet and Author 

When fickle Fortune frowns with a stern face,

And clouds of sorrow darken every place,

Think not each loss that wounds the human heart

Has come with no design, no hidden part.

If someone dear should choose to walk away,

And leave your world less bright than yesterday,

Perhaps that absence, painful though it seems,

Makes room for someone meant beyond your dreams.

If you are turned away where hope once led,

And every plan falls silent, cold, and dead,

Do not mourn too long the gate that would not yield;

A kinder path may wait beyond the field.

If you should miss the bus by chance one day,

And curse the hour that carried it away,

Who knows what danger travelled down that road,

Or what unseen burden fate had there bestowed?

For often roses flourish among thorns,

And brightest light from deepest darkness dawns;

The lark must leave the stillness of the night

Before it greets the morning with its flight.

So count not every disappointment loss,

Nor every burden as a heavier cross;

For Providence, with wisdom vast and wide,

Often hides its blessings in disguise.

And when your soul, surrounded by despair,

Can find no music in the heavy air,

Trust still the hand that guides both star and sea—

What

 seems denied may be your liberty.

THE LAWS OF LOVE ARE WRITTEN IN BREATH

 

Begin where the heart first trembled.

Begin where the wind carried your name.

The sky remembers who you were?

Before you learned silence.

The river remembers who I was?

Before I learned fear.

Love stands between us 

Like an old witness.

It says: Speak only truths!

It says: Do not hide!

In the shadows of your past.

The land hears everything.

When you touched me, 

the morning broke open.

Light spilled like a confession.

Even the stones leaned closer,

Wanting to understand 

Why two bodies tremble.

Do not make promises!

That you cannot shepherd.

Love is a creature! 

That starves without honesty.

Bring offerings of clarity,

not the sweet poisons of flattery.

Sit with me without armor.

Lay down your pride, 

Your weapon of choice.

Let the fire judge us both.

Let it burn away the lies we inherited.

Love teaches by tearing.

It reveals the weak beams in our bones.

It demands rebuilding—

brick by stubborn brick.

I have walked the perimeter of your silence.

I have stood where your fears sleep.

I have listened to the thunder,

Living in your chest,

Asking for shelter.

We are not strangers wandering 

Towards a temporary warmth.

We are two ancestral winds 

Meeting at a mountain pass.

We collide.

We reshape.

Let the old wounds speak.

Let the old ghosts be heard.

Love does not banish them—

it names them and keeps moving.

When morning returns,

may it find us still choosing,

still reaching,

still human enough to stay.

And the laws of love are written.

Do you hear the walls bleed

Aadil Ghulam Bhat 

Poet and Author

 

Do you hear the walls bleed at night?

Do you hear them weep in whispered wails,

In midnight murmurs no man dares read,

Their tired tales tucked beneath paint—

Beneath the smog of propaganda?

I have seen the silence scream.

I have seen laughter die in daylight.

I have seen light snuffed by sorrow,

By eyes too tired to wonder.

I have seen.

I have seen—

Pillows swallowing sobs like mourners,

Doors that forgot the art of welcome,

Ceilings sagging under secrets,

Windows blinking away the bullets,

As though war were only weather.

The walls—they flinch in fright.

They remember what we bury.

They remember how bullets bloom,

How joy jolts and dies on entry,

How peace parades in camouflage.

They wear wounds beneath wallpaper,

Tremble in the tapestries of time.

I asked the door, “How many left

Barefoot, shadows stretched past dawn?”

It did not answer—but it groaned.

Every crack is a confession.

Every nail, a narrative unnamed.

Even the bricks wear quiet bruises—

Their crimson cloaks camouflaged,

Hidden in the myth of construction.

These aren’t walls—

They are weary witnesses,

To wars the world won’t name,

To peace talks in twisted tongues,

To revolts drowned in diplomat’s tea.

The ceiling does not collapse.

It holds. It bears heartbreak like chandeliers

Cradle dust—ornate, ignored,

Always looming above our heads.

This house is a heart—

Walled, wounded, and waiting.

Its bones are battlefields of breath.

Its silence, a soldier.

Its whispers, weapons.

The ghosts are not gone.

They are archived here.

In folds of faded curtains,

In fractures of frozen frames,

In the scent of saffron and smoke.

I have heard curfews sing lullabies.

I have seen frost kissed by nameless marchers.

While children count coffins like sheep.

I’ve kissed the floor, frostbitten,

That remembers more names than monuments.

Do you hear the walls bleed?

Do you hear the soft, silent scream—

The suffocating cry of a house

That once had a homeland?

IN THE WAKE OF HER GAZE

 

Withdrawn am I from storm and street,

From silent towns and deserts wide—

Not driven back by wind or heat,

But by her gaze—undraped, defied.

Oh, I would tear through dusk and dawn,

Undo the hours in passion’s flame;

For all that's pure feels lost and gone,

And sanctity is not the same.

She, whose brow once stilled my breath,

Whose eyes held stars in river’s flow—

Has robbed the night of restful depth,

And dimmed the twilight's gentle glow.

Each symbol once within my mind

Now fades like whispers in the air.

No thought remains, no peace to find,

For even rest brings back despair.

And in your arms, what secrets slept—

Of springs that bloomed, then softly wept.

. The Wild Beauty of Lost Time

Aadil Ghulam Bhat 

Poet and Author 

Today, I am the shade of roses dead,

Their petals bruised, now scattered on the ground.

A token of the beauty once I knew,

Now trampled 'neath the weight of careless feet.

Once vibrant dreams, they gasp, they faint, they die,

Like smoke that fades and vanishes in air.

They curl into the void where once they burned.

From castles high I built upon the clouds,

Their walls now crumble, crumbling to dust.

What I once loved slips like the sand through glass,

Fading like whispers in the silent night.

What’s left of me’s a heart in jagged shards,

Heavy, broken, fragments of a soul.

Today, I wear the crown of those long lost,

A figure wrapped in shadows, deep in grief.

Tomorrow stands, a faceless, silent page,

Where no ink falls to mark what’s yet to come.

Perhaps the sun has turned its face from me,

Perhaps these shadows are my only guide.

I drift, a ghost, between what was and is,

A soul encased in winter’s endless frost,

As cold as stone, as still as nameless graves.