your name was etched into stone. that's how i first learned your name—noah bishop—written into the boulder near the vandalized white gazebo at the seafront with something sharp like a pocket knife or a shard of broken glass.
the second time i read your name was in school, your cousin listed down your name as his emergency contact. i paid no attention on it because there's a lot of people named noah and bishop was a common surname. i only knew that you were the same noah bishop from the gazebo when you took me there on our fourth date and pointed out your name.
the third was an accident. i wasn't supposed to see your name on my classmate's phone. i wasn't supposed to even look at her phone, period. i wasn't snooping but she left it on her bag while she roamed the classroom like it was her kingdom and you were calling. over and over again. that was when i finally put a face to your name when i saw your assigned picture. that also earned me a time locked inside the janitor's closet.
ever since then, you were everywhere. in everyone's conversation, on my social feed, in the convenience store buying a cigarette, in my dreams. but it was impossible for us to actually meet.
the fact that everyone suddenly knew you surprised me. this one person, who was just someone's cousin and someone's friend, was now suddenly everyone's favorite gossip.
it was like the universe decided one day that there should be a noah bishop, and so you were created from every atoms that were scattered across every galaxies, each one was mundane and imperfect. and from all those atoms, you existed. you who were special and perfect.
you were always in a reaching distant, but i could never touch you. you were untouchable. you and your crowd. but you begged to be touched. you wanted to be held, not at a cold distance where you had to hide and wait, but at your own sheets with flushed skins and heavy breaths. you yearned to be needed.
and i was foolish enough to give you all that. such a foolish, foolish girl who gave you everything and more.