Your hostel was two thousand and a few hundred steps
from mine. One day I counted. Useless pursuit in
collecting random data. Had I wanted to reach your hostel
in a hurry, I would have had better luck
from the wine shop in front of it, where I
spent most of my time in college. Of course, it
does not make much sense, now.
If you met me today, I would never admit I
loved you. What happens in college…stays
permanently in the scars of denial. I would today
tell my friends that it was a fling; that two hundred years ago, I fell
for a bimbo whom I gifted a book. The Collected
Poetry of William Butler Yeats. I wonder if
the man laughs at me now. Underlined, highlighted, dogeared,
a personal book given to a personal love. I heard
you did not sell it with the hundred pathology notebooks.
Not that it meant a thing.
And thirty years later now, what would you say, if
we met each other? Hello, I read that poem you
slyly scribbled in the back pages of the
book you couriered. Ahh, I hope you do not mind. It
was a boring flight, or, you know, I am
a cheapskate who gifts secondhand novels. Never knew there
was
a poem there. Or maybe
I deliberately wrote that, hoping….
That you would read it.
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