I have met you Before

Long long ago. Before we met. Before I fell in love. We had met before, before we met to fall in love. Too many befores. Now the story. 

It was a late summer morning. I was was wondering if I should be off to a gathering of some knowns and some unknowns. I was somewhat younger and going alone to one such place, was a perceived as a risk. A risk because, what if only the unknowns turned up and the knowns didn't. What if I was trapped in a lonely chamber with people I cudn't talk to? 

But nevertheless, like always in life, I took the risk. I wanted to remember some forgotten faces. 

We sat there, under the shade of old neem trees. The hot air, waited. Dry leaves, hung in the air. Time was moving slow. The knowns and the unknowns hung around. Talked stuff. 

And amongst those scores of unknowns, one was Him. I didn't notice him. He hadn't noticed me either. We belonged to some 'unnoticeable'-subspecies of humans. But as I faintly remember, there he was. Somewhere amidst that crowd. A voice lost in the noise. We stood beside each other for sometime. We talked to the same person, without talking to each other. I faintly remember. 

We parted that late summer morning, without knowing that we had met. To meet again. To fall for what seemed inevitable then. And to benumb each other with the opulence of it. But then to break apart, forever. Like.... oh I can't find an example.

And irony is, all the time we were together, I never found the time to tell Him, that -I have met you Before-

the lights are off, there is music, soft& smooth. and there persists the smell of a dry rose in the air.