Have you ever fallen in love with someone you are sure to never meet again?

I have. Plenty of times. It happens so spontaneously, maybe I'm crossing the street, coming down the stairs, or just standing on my balcony. It doesn't happen all the time nor even everyday. But it does happen. The others who I tell about it say that it's just an attraction or that it's just an uncanny attachment as the result of my loneliness. I disagree. It is love, I know it because I feel it.

Two hours ago I felt it again. I was traveling by metro when I saw a beautiful boy. He was standing right next to me but his mind was somewhere else. He was heavily preoccupied, slightly fidgety and completely distracted. I kept staring at his sharp nose and the curve of his lips but he didn't notice me at all. He didn't notice anyone or anything, actually, I doubt if he was conscious of his own presence. He was much older than me but he didn't look it, he looked just as he was supposed to in that space and time. I cannot explain this, forgive me. I don't know if it was the overtly cheesy song that I was listening to, or, the fact that it was my last exam today, but after I came out of the metro and started walking home I realized that I had fallen in love with him.
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I don't know his name, where he was going, or what he does. I just know that two hours ago I fell in love with a boy I'll never see again.

I wish he would get off with me, instead of continuing towards his destination. I wish that he would get off with me, then we could walk around my neighbourhood. I would show him my favourite park, the only park that has not yet been tarnished with outdoor gym equipment or perfectly shaped bushes and shrubs. It’s the only park that grows wild like a little forest in the middle of the city. We would sit there for some time and talk about everything. We would have arguments, discussions, and moments of epiphany reminding us about how easily we could have missed each other on the train. How easily all this could have been a figment of our imaginations... If we happen to get tired of the summer sun maybe I would take him to my favourite library, then, in between talking about Odysseus’ vices, we’d steal silent kisses every time the librarian looked in the other direction.

I guess this is how it would happen in a movie. The first example that comes to mind is Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995). Oh! To be Jesse and Celine in real life. But this isn’t a movie and hence I must teach my heart to compromise just as easily as it decides to fall in love with a random stranger.

People find it funny when I talk like this but it isn't as strange as it sounds. While I was walking home I realized that my unconscious love for him had awakened in me the consciousness about the countless times I had fallen in love… unconsciously. Today, M.A. ended for me, and, now I know that without planning to I have fallen in love with my campus and all its trees. I have fallen in love with the broken windows and ancient parapets where my friends and I often sat discussing Epics and modern politics in the same breath. I have fallen in love with looking at my professor's collection of Pulp-literature that I enjoyed the most while smoking Dunhills with him. I have fallen in love with sneaking out of a boring class to just sit on the lawn surrounded by amaltas and cassias. Looking, not thinking or talking or even dreaming, just looking at everything around me. I have fallen in love with the brick walls and the pathways, the staircases and the guards, the squirrels and the flowers. All the riots and the cars. All the things that I'll probably never see again. I know it is love. I know it because I feel it.