NEPHART.COM

The first time someone asked me,

“What is your plan for Valentine’s Day?”

I trusted him with a desire
I had kept beneath my tongue.

There was a beautiful girl in my class,
and I liked her.

Not wildly.
Not enough to call it love.

But some feelings refuse to drown.
No matter how deeply you press them,
they rise again,
like oil upon water.

Only two days were left.

He asked me to point her out secretly,
then said,

“Come to my room tomorrow.
We will buy roses together.”

His room was crowded with books,
most of them communist.

He was a student leader
for some political party,
and after seeing those books,
I understood where his voice came from.

That voice,
always roaring like a tiger,
even when nobody
had entered the forest.

We went to the florist,
and he told me to buy two roses.

I wondered who the second one was for.

I had never offered even one rose.
What would I do with two?

Maybe he thought
if she threw away the first,
I could offer another.

Or maybe I would stand there,
scratching my head,
wondering who deserved
the spare piece of love.

I was dreaming
of becoming two from one.

But soon I learned
the second rose was for his girlfriend,
the same girl
he had once introduced
as his roommate.

He smiled
like he had recruited another cadre
into the party of his life.

We ate at a restaurant,
and when the bill arrived,
his phone rang.

He walked outside,
wearing the face
of a national emergency.

I paid for everything.

Later, I found him
searching for a better signal
because his lovely roommate
had called.

I thought,

“Tomorrow, I might become like him,
with someone waiting for my call,
someone carrying my rose.”

On Valentine’s Day,
I dressed as usual.

Only my heart
wore something new.

He showed me the road she took
and the junction
where I should stop her,
kneel down,
and offer the rose.

It looked like a scene from a film,
except the director
was hiding behind a wall,
whispering instructions,

while I stood
in the middle of the junction,
holding a flower
and all my confusion.

Then she appeared.

He signalled for me to kneel,
so I knelt.

She frowned at first,
then accepted the rose
and smiled.

It was a suspicious smile,
almost rehearsed.

But she said, “Thank you,”
and for me,
that was enough.

We exchanged numbers.

She said she was late
and would call me later.

I went home
and waited.

One hour.

Nothing.

Two hours.

Nothing.

I could no longer hold myself back,
so I called.

An old man answered
and shouted at me
for dialling the wrong number.

I sat there wondering:

How could something feel so right
and still be entirely wrong?

She did not call that night.

I knew I had given her
the correct number.

The next day in class,
she greeted me
with the same staged smile.

We sat together
while the teacher spoke,
but I heard nothing.

I spent the whole lesson
looking at her.

During the break,
she said she had mistakenly
given me the wrong number.

So, we exchanged Facebook details instead.

That evening,
we spoke for fifteen minutes.

The first fifteen minutes,
and the last.

The next day,
she was absent.

Then three days.

Then a week.

Later, I saw her
on the back of someone’s motorbike,
vermilion powder
bright upon her forehead.

And I thought,

“She is married.”

Around the same time,
the student leader
borrowed books
using my library card
and refused to return them.

Until those books came back,
the college would keep
my examination card.

But he said
the college was exploiting us,
the fees were too high,
and the building should burn.

Nothing was ever simple with him.

Everything had to become
a slogan,
a protest,
a revolution.

Even my exams.

Even my small hope
of being loved.

Later, I learned
he had arranged everything
between a boy
and the girl who got married.

I had only been placed
in the middle.

A distraction.

A prop.

A scapegoat
holding a rose.

That Valentine’s Day
disappeared too.

I remember becoming desperate,
waiting near her house at three,
calling again and again,
asking her to meet me,

until she switched off her phone.

She could have told me
she loved someone else.

But maybe
she had already told me
in every way
I did not yet understand.

I was not foolish.

Only young enough
to believe
that a rose accepted
meant a door had opened.

Young enough
to mistake a performance
for affection,

and a student leader
for a friend.

Years later,
I no longer remember
what happened to the first rose.

But I still remember
the second one,

because it already belonged
to someone else,

just like
the whole story.