A missed moment

you're buying groceries at the nearby store and you bump into her and suddenly you're fifteen again. she asks you about how you've been and the truth is that you've barely thought about her for so long and even you have forgotten how she sounds like.

But now everything is flooding back, all the nights hiding yourself behind the pillows (perhaps from realities) and the smell of her skin on yours and how you felt so much in love that for once you were afraid of dying. you take all these words and punch them together in the spaces between, "I think of you sometimes."

she replied with “I miss you” and suddenly you remember everything - That first eye contact, the first hi, the first late night (all night in fact) conversation, the first "I love you", the first kiss (where you swallowed her tongue). For once how Life felt so perfect and peaceful hearing those breaths and occasional small snores in between..!!  

how her voice cracked up every time when she tried to match the falsetto of Amit Trivedi, and how she always covered it up with a cough thinking you didn't notice, always changing the topic when someone touched on her fear of getting attached, or how she always, always used to sleep with the light on. you remember it all..!! Just too good a memory to let go of..!! 

And you want to tell her how all the girls that came after couldn't warm your insides like she did six winters ago. And you want to tell her that sometimes you pass your old coaching centre and you hold your breath because it still reeks of her and everything you had. Sometimes you even look back on the road you walked down together and realize that it was only because of her that it was so pretty.

There is so much to say. So instead you just held breath and tears and pretended like your heart isn't going to explode with the weight of every love letter you and she ever wrote to each other. And you tell softly in her ear “is this your figure that has changed or you start wearing push-up bra’s?.” That made her smile, and thinking of that smile you smiled too; but this time with some tears in your eyes.

And you want to ask her about why it ended? it's just that one moment you were and the next, you weren't. you want to tell her so many things but you know that sometimes things don't fall back into place. But like you have thought about it for a thousand times and more, maybe this was for the best. Maybe it’s good that she and you don’t talk anymore. you don’t know why; it was she who said that. she must have had a pretty good reason. Right?

And as old saying goes - “Going back to an old relationship is like reading your favourite book and expecting a different ending to happen” and so, like all those years ago, you smile at her, and leave.