An Incomplete Love Story

They met one summer’s end. He was in town for not too long and needed to get back to his own country. Meanwhile, he hung out with family. His sister lived in that small town, and he was staying at her house. He drove around a Riviera car, his in-law’s, who was an American. To fill his time, he’d cross the street to see the pretty girl who was its night cashier. He’d caught her eye and he could tell that she was into him like he was into her! They’d flirted for a week when finally, he asked her out. She happily said yes. Romance was blossoming at rapid speed. The girl was seventeen and still in school. She didn’t know his language, but he knew a bit of English though it mattered not; they spoke to one another with their eyes! A soul connection like no other that he’d felt before in all his nineteen years developed in that week when first they met. He knew she loved him though they never spoke those “three short words.” He read it in the way she touched his face and gazed into his soul. If only she were finished with her school, perhaps she’d leave with him, for he could not stay longer in America. The time for him to leave came quickly. Both agreed to write each other, and they spoke by phone. It wasn’t like today with instant texts. The girl would fairly dance with happiness to get his cards and letters in the mail. They dreamed apart the dream of being with their other half so many miles away. The girl took off for college in a year. The young man tried to make a better life in hopes that she might join him one sweet day. But other plans got in the way, and he quite foolishly lost contact with the girl. She wrote to him, but he’d left home to train for his new job. The girl felt he’d moved on. . . The next year passed. The girl found a new man. Her soul mate he was not, yet she was young and foolish like the boy who’d failed to write and answer her last letters that she’d sent. He had his job. He called her home phone, but she didn’t live there any more. He got the number she was using, which was new. With nervousness, he called this number which her mom had given him. He’d not been told the circumstances and how she’d moved on. She took his phone call, asking “Who is this?” And when he said his name, there was a pause. . . She told him she was married, and a child was on the way. They chatted for a while, but he could never realize the pain the girl was feeling, knowing she could not be with him ever! To this very day, he does not know he stays inside her mind; that when she writes romance, she writes of him and unrequited love, not knowing that he too still thinks of her and always will. Now lost to one another, each subsists on memories of sweet unblemished bliss. July 23, 2018 Written in blank verse, all iambic pentameter lines. For Faraz Ajmal's "An Incomplete Love Story" Poetry Contest