The un­for­tu­nate truth is that she does­n’t care. Which is to say if at any in­stant the earth blew up, the sec­ond be­tween me reg­is­ter­ing the bang and col­lid­ing on a boul­der, I’d be think­ing of her. But she would­n’t.

Which is to say that I have kept her in that part of my heart where flow­ers bloom and but­ter­flies flut­ter all col­or­ful and cheery. But she has kept me in that for­got­ten cor­ner where she keeps her small pen­cils and rusty sharp­en­ers, in­side a ne­glected pen­cil cup.

I keep think­ing of things like this, and stare at noth­ing. I am in the class­room where a teacher is an­i­mat­edly ex­plain­ing vec­tor cal­cu­lus. For some rea­son, my soul is blue to­day. A dream is play­ing in my head with vi­sions of that as­phalt road, that slightly up­hill street on my way to col­lege. It is mid­day. Against the back­drop of the blue sky, cloud­less and in­fi­nite, a phan­tas­mal Hetauda is arranged to look like the real place. It is sum­mer and the world is asleep in a thin and sticky siesta. So the road is de­serted. It’s a ghost town. In my mind, I walk un­der un­der that placid sky un­der an um­brella. I am ei­ther very happy or at least not sad but it’s hard to tell in the heat.

The teacher’s voice fades out and ‘Video Games’ starts play­ing. The hallucination goes on, but I keep on walk­ing that same as­phalt street again and again. Like a video on loop, I pass by the same scenery every minute. Lana sings, ‘it’s you its you it’s all for you every­thing I do’

I put one foot in front of the other, then I put the next foot ahead of that then the first foot again and on and on. And I keep pass­ing her home. I pass her home. Then I pass her home again. Then I pass her home again. Then I … ‘tell you all the time heaven is a place on earth with you’ … pass her home again. Then I pass her home again. Then I pass her home again. And again, and again. ‘they say that the world was build for two’ … This is all I do.

She had once asked me, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beau­ti­ful?” and I had said, “Of course not.”

I keep on pass­ing her home as it be­gins to rain and the world is melan­choly gray. I keep on pass­ing her home as I’m some­how with­out the um­brella and drenched and shiv­er­ing. I keep on pass­ing her home as I grow as lonely as the as­phalt road and the de­serted houses. I keep on pass­ing her home all alone and for­ever. Every time I pass her home, my eyes in­stinc­tively glance to­wards the bal­cony of her room. Maybe she is there, I think. But she is­n’t. Even she has aban­doned this ghost town long ago to purse a col­or­ful re­al­ity.