Dear Ak,

You would have turned twenty seven today. We would have celebrated your birthday at work,clicked pictures with you, laughed with you. We don’t have a single picture together. Almost a year working together but not one photograph with just you and me. In the last few months I spent liking you I never even thought of taking a photo together. Who knew we would never get a chance again!

You are gone. I am here, mourning you, coping with the loss of a person who was never mine. One day we were laughing together, studying the difference between meteors and meteorites, India’s moon mission, the origin of marriage, the father of history, and the next day you were history yourself. Your cut up body was kept in ice, your insides removed, you were hollow, nothing but hollow. The guy I saw smiling every single day, the guy who laughed on my dirty jokes, who I thought was too nice to understand that I am flirting with him, nothing but hollow. I still can’t imagine that you are dead. Your eyes were half open and I waited for all this to be a long, bad dream. I hadn’t seen death before, not a mortuary, not a hollow person kept on ice and you dear friend were my first. I am sorry for talking about the gory details. For reminding you of my grief, a grief I never thought I would experience. We were nothing and yet we were something. People talked about us while you were alive, while we spent all our days together and laughed over how they thought we were a couple. Some of them talk about it now, how they thought we liked each other, but what do I do about it now. I wish I had told you how I felt. And another moment I thank my stars that I didn’t. It would have been so much more difficult. Not that it is easy now. I miss you. I miss you so much. I wish you were still here. You were my friend, my secret keeper and even though we spent only a year together, we were happy. I don’t even have a single bad memory of us. I can’t believe that I’ll never see you looking stealthily at me again. Why did you leave? I didn’t even look up when you told me goodbye the last time. I thought of seeing you the next day, to ask you why you were so tensed that day. But there was no tomorrow. No next day. Nothing. I didn’t see you again. I didn’t have the strength to see you dead, to look at your face one last time but I had to. It was my only chance to say goodbye. It didn’t look like you were gone. Your eyes half open, your face still beautiful, your beard, the one you were so proud of still so intact. You were the most beautiful boy I liked. You were the reason I felt like a teenager again, the one I started writing poems for,the one who helped me to get over my biggest heartbreak. And now, you are gone, giving me a pain, I had never experienced before.

You always wrote your name on all your things. All your drawers, your chair, your books, pens, pencils are untouched since you left. I took one pencil from your drawer and kept it with me. It is one of the two things I have that once belonged to you. The other one, a stupid wrapper that I saved is now buried at my favorite place in this world. It is a stupid gesture, and you would have probably laughed at it, but somehow it was my way to mourn you.

Your name meant “sky” and now everytime I miss you, I look up and think about you. I don’t know what happens after death and trust me I am giving it a lot of thought these days but I just want you to be happy wherever you are. You were having trouble sleeping in the last days of your life, I hope you have had a good sleep. That was the last thing you wished for. If reincarnation is a real thing I hope you get to live a fulfilled life someday.

You were a good guy, however cold hearted you appeared to the world, for me you were my only support at work, my reason to face Mondays, my saviour,my crush.

I miss you. I know, you know.

Yours,

MP.