Strangers with Memories

I walked past you in the hallway today 

we exchanged nods, tight smiles,

our eyes burn with years of memories

that don’t shine past the black of our pupils,  

but its routine, just like clockwork,

we look at each other for a second longer

than we need to. 

I wonder what subjects you take now,

I remember your love for numbers, 

and my love for words, 

two different languages that 

we became fluent in to understand each other. 

I read you Dickinson, Wordsworth, Shakespeare

and I remember how you grimaced at the romantic in me, 

when you tried to explain that love is nothing more

than a series of chemical reactions, 

and how you held me when it turned out you were right

and that the boy did in fact break my heart 

just like you said he would when you told me

“nobody wants a girl who is untouched”.

and I remember tearing up the literature

that lined my shelves that night, 

because love did not exist beyond the realms of fantasy, 

and nobody would love me the way that victorian gentleman

loved their headstrong, stubborn, disgustingly overeducated women

and so I wrote instead. 

if I could not live such great love stories

I would write them,

and you would listen. 

you wanted my words and I wanted your numbers,

I would give you everything you would ask for.

until there came a time where you did not want my words either, 

traded them for hushed gossip and pretty lies 

from duplicitous people who wield their words like knives. 

I'm no more a part of your life 

than you are mine

sometimes I think I just study math

to keep you in my mind.

and every day when we meet in the corridor 

we adhere to social protocol, 

acknowledge each other's existence,

before returning to strangers once more.