I’m walking down Broadway. It’s a beautiful sunny fall day. When I see her. She doesn’t see me. She’s with her girlfriend or wife and they are smiling and laughing. I’ve only ever seen her twice before. Once at a friend’s wedding where we should have, but didn’t because we were too drunk. And then a year later I saw her on a packed West Village street during Pride. I was sitting on a railing with my best friend and she passed me in the moving throng and I let her pass and then seconds later jumped down to try to find her in the crowd, but she was gone, enveloped in the celebration. That was years ago, back when I was single. Now I’m happily married. Truly. I’m not just saying that and she and her girlfriend or wife are so in love you can tell with only a glance at them. I stop. I don’t want her to see me. It’s not like she’s the one that got away because I have the right one, my wife. But more that she’s the question mark, the what if. I smile. Those two moments from 20 years ago were fleeting, but rich in possibility, at least in my memory. But we need some unknown, some ephemeral in our lives. Like a moth that appears and disappears before we can register it was even there. And they pass me and I continue toward the subway, toward my home and my love.
©2020 by Amy Driesler. All Rights reserved.