#1 â to you, whom i wished would have known me more than just my name
i canât clearly remember where or when was the first time i saw you.
it could be at the front gate, or maybe we didnât realize we had met on the stairs. it could be when i was sitting down in a circle with my friends while you were standing behind, arms crossed over your chest. it could be there, it could be anywhere. it could be one and a half years ago, it could be three months later.
yet i remember the way you spoke like how a bright spark speaks, as if you were someone who carefully graces the world with all his words. as time went by i started to learn that you painted pretty pictures, you did read, and i believed you did write, too. did i ever say you were someone i looked up to? i thought i did. but maybe i didnât. you were someone i looked up toâperhaps you still are.
you smiled a lot, and i couldnât help but feel something about it each time. when i saw you smiled at people, or at the kitten on your lap, or at the falling leaves under the radiance of the afternoon sun or at me, it was like for a split second time stopped and the wrinkles at the corner of your eyes pierced through all the bad in my life and everything was well again. you might think you formed that with only your lips, but honestly it was your eyes that shined the mostâa deep, wonderful pair of eyes that were so gracefully dark brown. i wished the whole world could see it too. even if maybe they couldnât, i wished they have at least once caught a glimpse of a smile as beautiful as yours.
many times i saw you walking around with a book in your hand. sometimes a fictional one, sometimes a journal, sometimes a book of poems, of arts, of humanity, sometimes pramoedya ananta toer and sometimes chairil anwar. you seemed to love collecting books, so i went to my favorite bookstore in town hoping i could find you grabbing some classic bestsellers in the corner of the room. funny. i found you in the books i read that evening instead. and then i found you in the bitter taste of my lattĂ©, i found you through the unobtrusive background music coming out of a small stereo above my head, and i found you, for godâs sake i found you, in the faint voices of people at the next table conversing about how nice the weather was. you were nowhere in that bookstore yet you were everywhere, in every corner, in the most irrational sense of existing ever. how did you do that, if i may ask?
i didnât get to see you that much, but i knew that you knew me. the moment i heard you calling my name from the opposite direction when we were both walking down the hallway, a voice in the back of my head whispered, he knew my name, he knew my name. should there be a possibility of you forgetting it in a week or two, itâs okay because iâd still accept the fact that it felt nice.
it felt nice, and it would still do even if i didnât find you sipping your favorite drink in the bookstore backyard behind a stack of old poem books and one in your hand. it would still feel nice even if all i knew about you was only the small conversation we once had about languages and going home. it would still feel nice even though your sparkling eyes are always going to look at somewhere that is not my direction. it would still feel nice even if you never knew it doesâor it ever did.
to you, whom i wished would have known me more than just my name, i guess itâs okay for you to forget those five letters of how people usually call me, or to not remember how we met and knew each other at all. i know you have a lot of things to do and i, a girl who just arrived at the front door, have a lot of things to do too. this letter was written only to tell you i that i might have slipped my heart into your pocket some time ago. i hope it will stay safe and sound.
