Attempt again.

I thought I'll just ignore the block and go ahead with an attempt to write a short story of sorts. Have to see how it turns out :-0

He looks at her, the lanky girl probably in her tip teens. Tall, slim and a face that sports many a zit. Acne accents her face the way makeup might, highlighting her cheeks and bringing her forehead to focus. Bright eyes, with a disinterest for the things around her, austre face that suits a teacher or perhaps a preacher better than a teenager. He looks at her again and it comes to him in a flash - distant laughter in a vast school ground. A little girl aged 10 chasing a boy eight years old. They squeal in excitement as she chases him and he triumphantly runs around sporting a look of pride. She never takes him or his pride seriously. He is her junior - a kid that needs to grow out of believing that he is an olympic goldmedalist in athletics.

Time takes him away to an unknown town that comes to life in geography texts. Packed bags, mushy farewells and a train lumbering out of the platform of childhood taking with it a cargo of memories. Memories fresh as flowers that will wither and fall in no time. Childhood bids adieu too, and a new day dawns.

He comes back form that fairy-tale town, back to where he lived as a child. He sees her again this time while she is waiting for a bus to get to her college. Pink zits stand out in her pale face. Their eyes meet and she looks away in a nano second not caring to register the face that looks longingly at her, in anticipation that a furnace of memory might ignite itself with their eye-lock.

He comes to her house one day, with a bar of chocolate in his hand and lots of doubts in his mind. "What if she's forgotten me?" ' what if?"
She opens the door for him and looks at him questioningly. A string of words later she lets out an amused laugh. A laugh that sounds like the bells in the nearby temple. " You have changed so much" she exclaims. "Into quiet a young man".

His journey begins - his journey of love. He comes to her at every conceviable occasion. His b'day once, her's once or sometimes his success in exams or his sister's friend's birthday party next door! The excuses keep coming like the rising sun, except not in that frequency. His thoughts wander around the premisis of her house and college. He lives a whole new life craving for more of her, his childhood friend that becomes his unexpected love at first sight!

The love blooms into a full-fledged adoration on his side of the world. On her side, it is reluctant to even take him seriously, let alone falling in love. He is to her, one of those children that needs to grow up.

A new Year dawns. He comes to her with a card heaped with countless caresses from his lips, unseen, unfelt, just like his love. "Happy new year" The card reads camoflouging the countless kisses and his selfless love for her.

"Thanks!" she replies grabbing the card and a flower and gently throwing it on the coffee table before her. " Look at this!" She shows him something that she wants him to see before she opens the card.

He face seems to gather more color than the zits provde her. Her lips bloom into a vivid smile. Her eyes shine with a light that he has never seen before. He cannot mistake that look. She is in love.

He looks at the picture she shows him. Broken pieces of his heart blur his vision.
He looks through the agony at the image that colors her zit accented face a bright hue, the hue of love. "What do you think?" She asks him?
"I am happy for you" His words fumble" genuine but miserable.

He walks back home, half dead - wounded. He decides to tell her about his love one day.

The platform bustles with family and friends. Her henna stained hands sport an array of glass bangles tingling in unision and accenting her temple bell like laughter. "Ting, ting" it goes. Her eyes flirting with the eyes of her husband, obliviously conscious about the crowd they are in. He comes with a bar of coloclate and a card drenched in tears. Tears that are as invisible as his feelings.
" I am in love" he tells her, handing over the card and shaking her hand with a longing to never let it go. She gently slides her hand out of his and exclaims in a child like excitement "When did you grow somuch?"
He answers without moving his lips, without molding his feelings into words -"when I saw you again."

She smiles at him, ruffles his hair and gives him a quick hug. "You are a darling, some young lady is lucky out there I tell ya."

He forces an empty smile.

The train lumbers out of the platform to a distant town, taking away with it a cargo of the one most precious thing he longed for. He looks in the direction of the disappearing train with a heapful of memories hard as rocks that will weigh on his heart forever.