Rushing to catch the morning train, I mistakenly slipped on my torn shoe in the hurry. The girl sitting beside me—probably eighteen—took me for a poor but respectable gentleman and began pouring out all her joys and sorrows.
Listening to her stories, I ended up at the wrong platform, but she didn't seem particularly bothered by that either. When leaving, she didn't even say a simple sorry. She only said, "We'll meet again."
Eleven and a half years ago, my lover had also said, wiping away her tears, "I'm going, but we'll meet again."
It occurred to me that every lover is eighteen, but not every eighteen-year-old need be a lover!
My current lover isn't the weepy type at all. I've actually never seen her cry. She's twenty-seven. By twenty-seven, lovers can no longer burst into tears at the drop of a hat. They know how to handle situations quickly—where do they have the time for crying?
Yet even after all these eleven years, something like a lament stirs within me, and despite having everything, my heart grows restless with a sense of not having something, not having something. I'm probably missing my ex-lover, longing to hear the sound of her naive, naive crying. I want to lose myself in her sulking, to drown in her emotions. I wonder, does she still cry like that? How old would she be now, roughly?
...No, I can't remember. And I can't quite understand why I'm thinking about all this either. I can only grasp this much: though a lover may be someone you love, the person you love may not always be a lover!
…না, মনে করতে পারছি না। আর এসব কেন ভাবছি, তা-ও ঠিক বুঝতে পারছি না।
শুধু এটুকু অনুধাবন করতে পারছি, প্রেমিকা ভালোবাসার মানুষ হলেও ভালোবাসার মানুষটি সবসময় প্রেমিকা না-ও হতে পারে!