Lost but Never Gone

Five years ago, when I was just a 7th grader, life felt simple—friends, school, and innocent laughter. 

But then, a face entered my world, a face that made my heart pause for a moment. She was my friend… yet in our conversations, our small exchanges of smiles, something deeper began to bloom. Slowly, our friendship turned into something more...

It often feels like some faces are not bound by time, but by the heart itself. I never told her, and she never realized. Yet my eyes always searched for her. Even if she missed school for a single day, it felt as though my breath had been stolen away.

But after 8th grade, life turned a page. I had to leave school, and the city too. My heart, however, never moved on. Every day since, I carried her memory. Every night, I wished she was still with me.

Time went by. Two years slipped through my hands. My hopes faded… but destiny had other plans.

On the day of my 10th board exam, amidst the chaos outside the exam center, I saw her again. My heart raced, my gaze froze. It was her. Two years of waiting collapsed into a single glance. But she didn’t notice me. She walked into a different hall, and I sat in mine—restless, waiting, hoping. Days passed, exams ended, and with them, so did my chance to see her again.

I just wished I could tell her once— “I still miss you.”

Life moved to 11th grade. I joined coaching, and one day fate brushed me with her presence again. She was walking ahead, I was behind. She didn’t notice me, but for me, that moment felt like a dream come alive. When class ended, I tried to follow her through the streets, tracing her footsteps—but it was as though she had vanished into thin air.

That night, one thought consumed me:

“Tomorrow… I’ll definitely see her again. This time, luck will be with me.”

But she never returned. Not the next day, not the next week. Later, I found out she had come only for demo classes. I waited for a month, but she never came back. For two long years, I searched for her face in every street of that city. Each time I saw someone from afar, I thought it was her… but up close, it never was.

Love… it doesn’t fade with time. It only grows deeper.

Today, I’m in Delhi, pursuing engineering. The city has changed, the days have changed… but she still lives in a corner of my heart. Maybe she has forgotten me, maybe she’s moved on, but I haven’t been able to let her go.

I don’t know where she is, who she’s with, or whether she ever remembers me or not...

Some stories are destined to remain incomplete—because it is the incomplete ones that keep the heart alive.

~ Fahmad