How About You

Chapter One: When Life Sat Beside Me

Love?

I don’t know how to define it,

but I know how it felt.

I felt it when he sat beside me, without asking permission.

When his presence became a habit, without me even noticing.

Then his absence became something unbearable, only when I realized it.

The first time I saw him, I didn’t see him.

I was sitting at my desk, like every day,

arranging my notebooks… watching eyes that never saw me.

And he was there.

Always there.

The desk next to mine.
The same silence.
The same glances.

But I didn’t see him.

…until that day.

The day I asked him, without hesitation, about an Arabic lesson.

He said in a calm voice:
“I will send it to you.”

Then he left.

He left, immediately.
And he didn’t send the lesson.

It was only him.

He shouted.

For the first time, he shouted.

And when I returned to my seat, my friend told me what he had done.

… I don’t know what changed inside me,
but something did.

I started seeing him again.

But this time, I truly saw him.

I saw how he smiled at me.

How he sent me “good morning” messages, as if gently touching my soul.

I saw how many times he hid his feelings from me, and how many times he wanted to say something… but didn’t.

In PE classes, running with him became lighter than ever before.

Drawing?
We started drawing together.
He blended colors the way hearts blend.

Everything about him…

…his smile, the way he spoke, even his childlike shyness,
started to resemble me more than myself.

But I said nothing.
And neither did he.

We kept loving, without announcing that we loved.

Then came the separation…

Suddenly.

It was as if something decided to pull the days from under us.

We became nothing but a memory walking through the hallways,
we didn’t meet, we didn’t talk, only looked at each other from afar.

…I remember the first time I saw him after a long absence.

His eyes…

They were the same as I left them.

But my heart was not.

And when my eyes met his…

I heard a voice inside me clearly say:

“I miss you.”

His gaze was enough.

It said everything that was never spoken.

And today…

I am here.

And he is there.

…And nothing connects us anymore,

except that silence,
and those glances,

…and that love which never took a name.