in a post in january, i answered on the last set of 3s question that i wanted to write a book before i die. technical or not, here is my first installment.
we were strangers in meeting. we were but names with associated faces no more and no less than an occasional hello and a cautious smile. you never cared wearing a smile, not even half of it as you strided to and fro snapping your fingers to the beat of your steps. and for a time, that sound was a beacon of your proximity. a rhythmic pulse of my unconscious awareness of your presence that confined itself to 15 min breaks and lunches.
the room was cool but the jacket i was wearing kept me warm. it was one of those endless summers where days stayed indistinguishable from each other. and thus, i was unaware if it was a monday, a tuesday or any other day of the week. one afternoon, you were standing directly in
my line of sight, a few rows away as i put on chapstick. how you got there i don't know. you might have been walking back to your cubicle after printing a test page. perhaps you might have just stood up and was heading to the bathroom. you had on one of those simple collared shirts which college students never gave up wearing. i knew that despite the faded colors, it was scrupulously clean and i wondered if you did laundry yourself or if a housemaid did it for you and your family.
i kept swiping my lips with the balm as i innocently indulged my imagination with your supposed demographics just as i have done with many others before to kill time. then as if an orchestrated moment, our eyes met, held and then gave way to modesty.
had i known that our locked gaze signified the conception of something wonderful, i would have noted in my journal the date and time of the event. but aside from your face gaining clarity in memory, i noticed nothing and so shrugged the urge to reach for my pen and journal. but i had often wondered since then if we'd find our eyes locked again if i rose from my seat and started
putting on chapstick.