i dropped my pencil. the sound it made against the tiled floor reverberated within the four walls that would have burst from the intense pressure building up inside of me. i was scribbling some poetry, and someone was seated across me, reading every word as they appeared on my desk. he rose from his chair and knelt to pick my pencil up. with one knee on the floor and
another bent for support, he offered me my pencil and it took me five seconds before he finally placed it on my desk, and it would have taken more if no one had intruded on that most cherished moment. during that brief awkwardness, multitudes of emotions swarmed over me, threatening to drown my very consciousness. for five seconds, i thought about a hell of a lot of things.
first, that he looked like the very vision i had in my mind of someone proposing or asking for the hand of someone he really loved. a prince, if i may. a gallant gentlemen amidst the modern world that didn’t know the word “chivalry”, a forsaken world deprived of classic courtship and all its magic. a world where one hopeless romantic’s fantasies will never be more than mere fantasies. i gazed into his eyes, my vision blurry from the tears i kept inside and my second
thought struck me: he wasn’t my prince, he wasn’t my hero, but i still kept on wishing that he was.
i never went out of my way to find a guy. nor did i allow any guy to find their way to me. i kept myself distant, absorbed with more “mature” things than teenage infatuation. every single guy who mistook me for some dainty damsel because of the way i look didn’t last a few seconds after a brief tirade that was meant to make myself appear the harsh, cold, and reclusive person that i believed i was, until he saw past all my pretenses and i welcomed his friendship with all the warmth that i could give – as a friend. never nothing more. he listened to every word i had to say – complains, whines, and girly fantasies i had about some guy i was crushing on. i reciprocated just as attentively. but all of it was just pretend. we knew there had to be something more, something building up that neither one of us wanted. we didn’t want it simply because we couldn’t have it, and being friends was much much easier. and less complicated. and my third realization sprang into my mind: he was kneeling there because he
was merely helping me pick up my fallen pencil, not rekindle my dampened heart.
heartbreak. they say it’s too painful to describe. I couldn’t describe it either, but not because i fell victim to fate. rather, i was simply in too much joy to feel my heart shatter to pieces. he was there, picking that pencil up becasue he was my friend. because i had never been ashamed to admit that i loved him…as a friend. and then a fourth insight made its way into my already crowded head: friendship was what i had wanted all along.
friendship was what i wanted because of some very selfish reason. consider a guy and a girl so much inlove with each other, and the guy with a trifling affection for someone else. had the guy chosen that other girl, and given up the love that his rightful girl had to offer, he’d been
a fool. and i certainly wouldn’t have been happy to have him telling me he loves while he pretends it was her cuddled beneath his arms, wondering how it would have been were it the other way around. I’d rather be the person he dreams of when he’s reading her letters and pretending they
were my poetry. Even if it wouldn’t happen so much. It would have been my great comfort to know he atleast thinks of me. I can’t have him looking at me and seeing her whole face there, I’d rather have him looking at her and seeing me there, even if it were only my cheek that he was seeing. My stupid little cheek that makes me feel so nice when he touches it. He held them as though he was telling me I’m sorry. You’re perfect, but for someone else. Then the last thing that came to my mind was the thought of this knightly gesture being the closest thing to a fairytale picture that I’ll ever get to have with
him. This would probably be my last best memory of him. And it was.
I sobered back as a familiar voice that came from the doorway, calling his name, broke my reverie. he placed the pencil on my desk without waiting for me to take it from his hand. He bade me goodbye, a goodbye that was meant to mean forever. sure, we did see each other for the next few months, he was my classmate after all. and he still said goodbyes every now and then, but they were never any deeper than just mere goodbyes. that day, that moment, when he ended all the baffling magic that had been my sole support for a smiling face, when he said goodbye rather than goodbye, he made it even harder for me to say those words to my feelings than it already was.
He gave me five seconds to search his eyes, looking for the answers I so desperately need, and five seconds was all it took. five seconds for five thoughts.
i stared at my pencil that lay flatly on my desk, absorbed by the emptiness of the room, and of myself. He was never my prince, he was never my knight-in-shining-armor, he’d been the manifestation of a sad dream that almost came true. almost. except it never was possible from the start. and as i picked my pencil up, cherishing that last memory of him, the him that I had known, the him that I think I loved, the him that will never again exist in my reality, I scribbled the last three lines of my poetry:
Eventually the leaf will have to fall,
But atleast there was Spring -
There’s a season (and a reason) to recall…
i looked at the pencil i used to write all these down. I can still feel his fingerprint pressed to mine, the lead unwearied. and the story unexhausted. this is my 99th tribute to him. and i shall never grow weary, for as long as the pencil could suffice.
