One cold morning,
One usual Tuesday,
I awoke before the sun,
I stretched before the clouds formed,
One exact moment in the morning,
when the water met my face
and when coffee hits the nerves,
I remembered.
It was breezy and gloomy,
The wind blew calmly across,
I can feel it in between my fingers,
I can feel it on my chest
in between my shirt and my skin
as I board the seven o’clock train.
There you were walking down before me
as I wait patiently for the train tracks to roar,
I saw you in your beige jacket,
Your green blouse,
Your black laced skirt,
Your fair, fair skin,
and your black rim glasses,
that tried to hide,
but could not, the droopiness of your sleepy eyes.
I saw them all,
I feel them all,
The beauty, the casualness,
I know them all.
I see you almost every other day,
In the same train,
At the same time,
In the same barrack of steel that encapsulates
all the passion and the indifference we have about our career.
But we never spoke.
Your beauty, your casualness,
is proof that coincidences are dangerous
and fate is perhaps overrated.
I always wonder why
in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of life
we are still hiding behind a façade,
a wall,
a barricade of non-verbal stimuli.
Why are we, in the depths of our cover up,
our ego,
still not anticipating a conversation?
I assure you,
Our eyes met more than once,
But we looked away pretending that this ardor,
This obsession,
This craze and zeal,
is nothing more than a line of sight
and a blink of an eye.
But I know for sure you’ve seen me,
And I know for sure you’ve seen me
seen you,
So what lies between us is a barrage of men and women,
rushing off to their nine AM clock in.
Men carrying their brown briefcases of complexities and anxieties,
Women carrying their vibrant colored handbags of regret and rage,
All to conceal and suppress,
To obscure and to disguise
one uncomfortable conversation about the hardships of their lives.
Perhaps we could never find the courage,
Perchance we never will.
Perhaps this poem will never see its poetic justice,
Perchance it should never too.
But in case it did,
And in case we found courage,
I’d like you to know
that in my train of thoughts that are propped up of complete nonsense,
there is one clear emotional track that will not detour,
and that is to see you sitting opposite me
in that cold metal seat,
and to have you meet me in the eye
only to have the both us look away
in sheer interest
and utter ignorance.
But we both enjoy the visual flirt.
Don’t we?
