One
Some nights while we lay unsleeping we would talk about the distant past, eager to find a shared memory, for example the exact time and circumstance how we met, the people that were around us and the kind of conversations we would engage in. But you knew fully well that you’d caught sight of me long before I came to know you, and you remembered your first introductory speech that you’re a writer, who wrote poems as well as a column for the Youth Literary Weekly, that I responded in a not too surprising voice that I had already noticed, but would secretly keep my admiration for your green and stimulating achievement well under guard, so in the mini-bus, a short journey you at last reminded by friends to escort me home, after consuming all the alcohol, bragging all utopian talks, we usually sat in silence, and myself, the one who was considered more talkative, blamed it to the coldness of night, or the tiredness from my day job, would become a mute parrot, wordless and subdued. (November 4, 2020)