It Was Not The Beginning Of Pain Poem by RIC BASTASA

when i hear that music
which is played outside this enclosure
whose windows are like leaks
upon a container of water
i remember you

alone in the other side of the room
we were then in zamboanga
we were boarders and i was reading a book
behind the wall that divided us

i was pretending
not being concerned about your loneliness
which i inadvertently presumed

i allowed the silence to creep on the floor
rising to my hair

which could not in any sense understand at all
what was happening
within me, it was strange,

it was a nostalgia that i never figured out
till then

it was too painful for me imagining that you love me
and that soon
when i finally left for another destination
i put it upon myself that you should miss me somehow

it was a little bit awkward
but i wanted it to reign in my heart
like it was a precious gem

i wished i had knocked at the door of your room
but the lights were already turned off
and i was presuming that you too were listening to the
silence of the enclosure where i am
situated comfortably
in my pretensions

i could have loved you and told you about it
but i knew that with the prevailing
times, the chaos and the rules of the game of war
during that time

us loving each other would be as absurd
as lines traveling parallel to each other
and in opposite direction
should ever meet

i understood the situation so i also turned off the light of that room

when i left the following morning for a new assignment
the landlady told me that you already left much earlier

That was not actually, the beginning of my pain
it began when i first met myself and got introduced to it
with me not knowing myself exactly,
with such an accuracy denied to the level of my convenience
or comfort.