Lost Frames

I had a friend when I was growing up. I loved him and he loved me. There was this girl whom he fell in love with. And then I met her and unfortunately...fell terribly in love with her. You know how your first love is. It was magical. It is twenty years and I still remember her perfume and the taste of her lipstick. It is also twenty years since I lost a good friend. He may be dead, might be living a good life somewhere or maybe, like me, struggling with definitions of a good life.

Wherever he is, I miss him and in some corners, so does she. He was a special friend.

Before we parted, he was my friend for about 8 years. If he were around he would have known...that beautiful girl he lost to me twenty years ago never really went on to become mine. I failed miserably when it came to ownership of all things nice and wonderful.

Like parallel railroads to eternity, I and her have stared at each other relentlessly across a small but unfathomable distance. The trains of time have rolled over us relentlessly, without respite. Our once youthful faces have grown vague wrinkles. We smile less often for we know that these lines are going to stay. We talk less because we are afraid of hurting each other. We meet each other less often for we believe that if we need to meet more often them we would be asked to define our relationship in more contemporary terms.

But we still talk about you. Together I and her, we look at that missing point of this crazy triangle. If she had chosen you over me, would all our lives have been different? How would we ever know.