Phantom Love

In the summer of 2009, I lost something that was never mine.

13 years have since passed, but the doubt grows ever anew,

Who was it that entered the classroom,

Wearing sweater on a hot summer afternoon.

The twinkling of the eyes, the smile on the lips,

A rather harsh voice, and the hair with the clips,

All that I remember, albeit hazy as a monsoon cloud,

And with time even that is eroding into the abyss ground.

But what remains are the fragments,

The fragments of a phantom love.

It didn't struck at first, as reality rarely follows fiction,

Until one day I realized, and came my inhibition.

Never had the courage to say the words that meant

Nor had the eloquence to write them, unlike the present.

The summer went on in silence, at least on my end,

Yet fewer, maybe none, better summers have I spent.

The reminiscence of those days grow faint, even as I write,

Maybe dreams diminish after thousand nights.

But what remains are the fragments,

The fragments of a phantom love

It ended just as the summer ended, on the onset of winter.

Like a gale or a maelstrom, set my heart full of splinters.

The butterfly that fluttered my heart strings left the school,

Leaving me with an empty emotion, cold and cruel.

Since that day till now, something still feels amiss,

As if my shoes are on the wrong feet, or the sun is setting in the East.

One day fate might put us on the same road, just to play its game,

And for that day I wait, as if 13 years and one day are the same.

Cause even though all that remains are the fragments,

These are fragments of a phantom love.