Once, We Were Forever

 To the Stranger I once knew,

I hope this letter finds you, yet I dare not task the messenger pigeon with it.

Instead, this letter, once folded, will join others, and blissfully will I forget ever penning it down.

I wish I had forgotten about you. And I had, until a song played. And I sang along, tuneless, swinging along the beats.

    It ended, and I still swayed in the ghost of its rhythm until I remembered you and I trooping one afternoon in late July to the place it was filmed.

    Its lofty walls looked over the sea-link, too high for a five-two me, and we decided to camp there.

    You laughed and teased, and I never felt embarrassed. You gave me a shove up and promised that’s how it will be, with you watching my back. Now, I turn around even in grocery stores just to watch my own back.

    I don’t know how it all changed. One moment you were there, the next you were gone. And I am the kid lost in a grocery store, realizing they are the adult now. And you were just a stranger that befriended me.

We once dreamed of spilling beans over coffee and Vodka.

Now I reminisce you, when your memories creep on.

And it’s funny how you were no lover of mine.

But a twin flame I thought inextinguishable, now reduced to cold embers.

    Seven years of knowing you and all that’s left is a spider that glows in the dark. ‘A part of me, for days when I am not around’, you had whispered as you handed it to me, and we gave it some generic name. And ever since then, it has found a home in my box of spare pens and markers. I remembered it would be safe there. After all, pens are a writer’s prized possession. But it sits there, forgotten, until I need a pen only found there. Then it peeks from underneath some Post-its, and I remember the summer you gave it to me.

    I have a sweatshirt that was supposed to be warm, smelling of you, comforting in the cold months. And for a while it was just that, like a hug from you even through the distance. Now it’s shuffled around the closet, it’s mere touch smearing my fingertips with what was. It’s marooned by the same shade of shame that perhaps colors you every time my name’s whispered around you.

    Do you think of me then? I have no way of knowing. Will you tell me?

Nothing but forgotten to each other,

I only hope someday you look back through the photos

And see us smiling on the steps of a national park

Arm in arm, a toothy grin, promises of forever at the tip of our tongues.

Alas, it’s only wishful thinking, and that too a rarity. 

         I hope one day I no longer turn around in grocery stores and you don’t see a ghost of remembrance at the sound of my name.

    Once, I wrote a letter to win you back, now I am writing to say goodbye.