Room 2-A
He watched her through the rusted window grilles;
While chalk dust danced in streams of morning sun;
His trembling hands left prints upon the desk wood;
The ceiling fans cut through the province heat.
He saved his coins from morning bread and ice drops;
To buy her books, wrapped careful in newsprint;
Their phone screen pierced the February shadows—
Each message worth the hunger pangs at dusk.
Manila called him like a siren's promise,
While she stayed rooted to provincial soil;
Their messages grew shorter, then to silence,
Till college turned their world to separate skies.
A decade melted into office silence...
He sees through seasoned eyes what youth had veiled—
A boy who built his temples out of whispers
In that old room where mangoes rained like tears.
She still drifts 'tween his dreams of Guagua's twilight,
Still wearing that smile time could not erase;
Though years have softened edges of those moments,
His 2-A desk still guards their carved remains.
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