Love Lost In Translation

I called him today to ask if he wants to play League of Legends and he asked me to wait a couple of minutes because he had to go call her to wake her up for the 2,191st time in the 2,191st day that he has been in love with her, and the 2,191st day that he has gone without telling her how he actually feels. I didn't understand how she can't see that everything that he does for her screams I love you, louder than his voice ever will. But then I did. This poem is for him and the thousand others just like him.

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so much of love is lost in translations.

it spills out by the time it travels

from one human to another.

for the man at the subway has no clue

that the reason i play john legend

everytime he sits beside me is because

i heard him humming 'all of me' last week.

the same way my father doesn't realize that

my mother baking his favorite cake

is a way of apologizing for their fight last night.

love faces language barriers at our doorstep.

love, sometimes, is an urdu poetry

dying to be understood by an englishman.

love wears a trench coat

of languages so foreign to you

that when you look at it from the peephole,

you don't let it in,

for you think, love is just another stranger

who lost its way to you.

so much of love is lost in translations;

like how the word 'love' doesn't amount to

even half of the word 'mohabbat'.

and 'mohabbat' doesn't even come close to

the moments spent with your mother,

her fingers untangling your hair

while you lay on her lap;

or the times your lover took you stargazing

but just couldn't keep his eyes off you.

love takes courage

and people like me don't have it.

so the next time i fall in love with someone,

i hope that

when they see me play their favorite songs,

they'd hear a thousand i love yous instead.