In Another Life

She wrote down his name in the front page of her book in tiny letters. She loved how wonderful it felt to leave the book around in the open with her affection for everyone to see and touch but no one ever noticed the gigantic messages hidden in those tiny letters. She would smile to herself for the little mysteries she created in her life. Sometimes she would purposely let him borrow her book and watched him look so clueless and oblivious to her love. The excitement that follows made her want to scream into the open that she was so ardently in love.

She wrote down his name in page 33 of her book. They walked home together everyday and one day he told her that her smile reminded him of someone beautiful he knew. She couldn't sleep that night, she tossed and turned in her bed and then she rushed to her mirror and smiled. She looked lovely. She decided to tell him that she wanted him to be hers to hold, to love and to cherish. She wanted to surprise him with her confession. She asked him to meet her after school even though they always did but she wanted to showcase the emergency of it all. He rushed over after class.

"Have you ever fallen in love?", she couldn't look him in the eye.

"Yes.", he looked at her.

She decided to feel the truth with her eyes and looked into his and she saw it. The longing for love. The longing that wandered in his eyes even after it left her eyes. The longing for someone that wasn't her.

She wrote down his name in page 78 of her book, with some of the letters smudged. She willed herself to forget him but the ink that had spelled his name stained her heart and it wouldn't go away. When he told her how he reunited with the love of his life, she gave away one of her smiles. Smiles that she had collected from moments they shared together and she was ready to give them away for him. When he told her he was going to marry her, she gave away another one of her smiles. When he told her that he was going to be a father, she was so delighted that she embraced him with a warm heart, exhausting her supplies of smiles. The act of letting someone go as you are holding onto them was an art only a few had mastered.

She wrote down his name in the last page of her book the day he died. Her wrinkled hands brushing over each letter so delicately as if he were still breathing. She finally understood why people wrote the names of the people they love in the last page. It was to remind themselves of the permanency or temporariness of love. If it lasted, the page stayed. If time had diminished their love and transformed it into another emotion, the page was torn. Emotion was always conserved, it couldn't be destroyed.

She pondered about how innocently he became a part of her life,how he'd inhabited the shiny corners of her heart and dozed off because of how tired he was of wandering around, how when she found him she covered him with a blanket of unconditional love to ease his heart. She knew that one day he'd walk out and leave something behind, something to remember him by or maybe he wouldn't because the realisation would have dawned on him that he had left too big an imprint to ever let her feel his absence.

She shuffled through the book to find his last letter addressed to her. She had finally decided to read it and felt the sensation of euphoria hitting her soul as she read through his living words. He had left behind three words in the end that clasped onto her lips like smiles and pushed down tears from her eyes. It read 'in another life.'