i did not go to the bookstore today so i did not meet Loneliness; i wanted to meet her and chat about my friends; i wanted to ask how she found Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus that she had bought last week; she had told me about her family who died in the plane crash and i had not known what to say; i wanted to tell her about the friends i had lost but she was not interested in discussing her brother Time; i wonder if she would have visited the shop today, wearing the usual grey pyjamas with her black hoodie or had she finally bought the rose-coloured satin shirt she had been talking about for weeks; i wanted to run to the shop to see if even today she was crouched on the sofa with a copy of Granta, with the book of constellations splayed out across her lap; she comes every weekend and stays for three or four hours; i asked her why she does that; she just replied, “because i am lonely”.
Swarnim Agrawa
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