A Girl in My Periphery

She sits at the front of the study room,

Committed from three to six,

not a word leaving her lips.

Her eyes fixed, steady, never wandering

to the whispers and sounds around her.

A life so much like mine

I see myself in her.

And surely, she has friends,

friends with whom she laughs like there’s no tomorrow,

with whom she feels unjudged, unburdened.

We play a game of glances,

each caught in our own orbit, studying.

She stays in my periphery,

a figure I never fully turn to,

as my eyes are fixed, too,

on the pages in front of me.

I cherish this silence,

this quiet shared presence.

We study together, in silence.

With not even a glance at each other.

Then she gets up and leaves.

While I smile to myself, thinking…

She glows in my mind's eye.

I haven’t even broken the ice.

If only circumstances were different,

I might have pursued a friendship,

but here, I just sit, content to wish,

though even that feels hard to admit.

A.V