Written by: Hannah Tayla
Original Date: 14 December 2020, Revised: 6 December 2021
For (e)M, and to all the people in my class in high school whom I did not befriend.
Where were you in high school? Did you ever complete your homework, or did you keep yourself ‘cool’? Did you wait after school to gossip and joke with people who were only interested in hard drink and cigarette smoke? Or did you play football on the field because you were broke? Did you walk home with friends? Did you dance and sing and make funny impressions, simply to distract you from your depression? Did you run across the road or did your catch a taxi? Did your mom ever fetch you in her ankle-length maxi? Or did you catch a lift because she was always on dayshift?
Where were you when you cried? Was it behind the bathroom or at the back of an empty classroom? Was it perhaps during class, when you did not show up, or was it at home after dark?
I sometimes wonder if we had met then, would we have chatted for hours?
Or would I have ignored you?
Would we have made each other laugh and cry, and grown so close we could interpret each other’s sighs?
I wish I had known you then, I wish I knew you now,
but some paths only cross once and never again. I think about you often and I can’t pretend, I hope we reconcile soon, my dear distant friend.
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