Reading the online journal of a boy who once claimed to love me, I realise how far he's gone. Not just from me, but from the life he once lived. I can still recall those early morning phone calls from thousands of miles away, after a long night drenched in vodka and ghazals (his night not mine). His soft, shy voice struggling to what I could only interpret as an attempt to boost my ego. It felt good and silly and somewhat scary to be the object of the affection of someone I didn't feel the same way about. He thought I didn't reciprocate only because I was already spoken for, I knew it was because he would never make it into my soul. His poetry was too picture perfect and lyrical. The words did not fit into mine, the rhymes threw me out of whack. Even the one he wrote after I broke his heart by telling him I could never speak to him again. Something about how love had left him and gone. After this, he said, everything I write I will always write for you. I told him it wouldn't last even a month - me being the subject of his poems. He proved me wrong, it lasted 6 months. I write about him now because his poems still linger with the scent of my being, even though I know they are no longer about me. Maybe he just keeps falling for the same kind of woman or maybe he just keeps falling for himself thinking it's the same kind of woman. But he's moved on and how. I see a new sense of self-worth and confidence and it makes me smile. I see some of his dreams brought to fruition and it makes my heart leap. I see the same picture he sent me years back and it makes my eyes squint. But more than anything else, I realise how I'm still the same. He could make that 12-hour difference phone call to me today and my heart would beat the same way. In that slow, laborious way that reminds me I'm still struggling to unlock something that only I have the key to.