The gift

I lost it.
The watch that
you'd given me.
The one whose
heartbeat I could hear
through my pillow
on the silent nights,
away from home,
in an exhausted,
sound-asleep dorm.
I used to keep it there,
under my pillow,
every night, carefully.
And then one morning
I couldn't hear it anymore.
That reassuring ticking.
Someone had stolen it.
That maroon, plastic
piece of my childhood
which I could have wound
tight around my wrist,
even today, like a
borrowed beating heart.
They can't steal though
the eyes that you've given me.
And I'm trying to keep in them
the light alive.