How much I love you, or how little,

I could fathom not,

Even as the years rolled by,

And age caught up,

With our hair, black as a moonless sky till the other day,

Getting a sprinkling of gray,

The skin of our face, polished as a mirror,

Getting the first, almost imperceptible wrinkles,

Our reflexes, galloping like a stallion on fire,

Slowing down, bit by bit,

Breakneck turbulence of relations in youth,

Giving way to an undying inseparability,

Till one day, in a dreaded nightmare,

I see an obnoxious Knight charging towards me, &you,

Extracting a heavy toll of misery and loss,

Even as I stand frozen in my tracks,

My mind numb with fright,

My heart running faster than a bullet,

A sudden, hitherto unfelt feeling of losing something dear hit me,

Hit me hard, as my very being slipped into an emotionless vacuum,

And for the first time in the decades gone by,

I realized what you, my sweetheart, mean to me,

As the fountain of my love for you,

Buried till now, maybe, in the depths and secrets of my heart,

Burst forth with all its extravagance,

As the precious moments of affection and passion spent together,

Flashed in my eyes- a lifetime captured in a few moments,

The touch of your skin, the warmth of your breath,

The softness of your hair, the curves of your body, everything,

Made me realize that life without you will be the road’s end for me too,

So even in my deep slumber, I mustered the courage,

To push back the charging Knight, with its nefarious designs,

And an evil eye on you, my love,

To break the tight shackles of the nightmare,

And take you in my arms, and plant a kiss on your lovely lips,

With a promise to myself,

To never let any Knight-errant cast an evil aspersion on you again,

Whether it be a dream, or real life……….