The spectacle

The same moment my feet touched the hard and stable concrete of a train platform, my sight was attracted by a girl. Dressed in a gray coat, with neck covered with green scarf, alone by a newsstand. Not particularly pretty in the obvious way, but with this little cute spark of a lost girl that was set by her big green eyes watching carefully people getting off my train. Her mouth slightly open, I had a feeling that any moment words would start slipping out to greet somebody, someone awaited for a very long time, someone missed, but kept in heart. Common scene on a train platform, where hundreds of girls wait for hundreds of beloved ones every day. And nothing made this one any more special than the others.

Regardless of this fact I stayed, put my back against a column, and started to throw her way a look from time to time. With this awkwardness of a beginner stalker, not knowing what and how to do, but somehow curious. I was looking at her lips prepared for the welcome-home kiss, her eyes full of hope, scanning through the crowd from under a fringe chestnut color hair.

It wasn’t long until the last of suitcases passed by the girl in gray coat. An older man attached to a long handle of his luggage disappeared in the tunnel entrance, and then it was just her and me on the platform.

Now I am ashamed to admit, but then in my twisted mind I have expected to see frown on her face, to see the excitement disappearing from her eyes in this one moment of failed hope. Don’t know why, maybe because there is something beautiful in sadness, maybe because there is something amazing in strong feelings. Maybe because in all of us sometimes there is this malicious, destructive craving of something terrible to happen. Maybe because I am just evil or sad inside myself. Or maybe because it would be a different ending to all these common stories of waiting on a train platform for a missed one, meeting and going home holding hands. I wanted to see in this one moment, in this one being, a spectacle of dying hope. Final act.

But in spite of my predictions the girl smiled. Not forcing the smile, not with consolation, not with “ah, it is nothing”. No, she smiled just like that, sincerely, friendly, towards the emptiness left with disappearing of the crowd. Smiled in a way as everything went according to her expectations. To some mysterious plan that suddenly in this moment I wanted to know, guess, hear, which I wanted to be amazed by.

Just as by her, because in this one moment, in this one smile she appeared so beautiful. Or maybe I was looking at her so long that she managed to charm me in the meantime? I know only that in this one moment I wanted to be that passenger that she was waiting for on this cold March morning, in her gray coat and green scarf. I wanted to be the one that would hear the long prepared words after touching the hard and stable concrete of the train platform. I wanted to be the one that would close her hand in his hand and disappear in the tunnel entrance, along with fading rattle of suitcase wheels.

I wanted only that much, without any thought of “to be continued”, no picnic by setting sun, no Aprils after this one March morning.

My eyes opened wide with hope, my lips opened slightly, ready to say hello, and even ready to follow it with I-missed-you-so-much kiss.

The girl raised her head a bit, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The smile hasn’t disappeared even for a second. For a moment I had a feeling that she will turn towards me, with all the sincerity of her smile, with all greenness of her scarf, with all brownness of her hair. For a moment of this time hung between us I didn’t desire anything more, I wasn’t hoping for anything else happening in my life. But without opening her eyes, like she wanted to keep the view of empty platform in her mind, she turned back towards the tunnel entrance and started to walk away, leaving behind just a memory of chestnut color hair and green eyes and emptiness in my eyes, emptiness in place of words that I could have spoken.

And I got what I wished for. Got what I hoped for in the first place. For one moment, in one human being, I’ve seen the spectacle I was counting for – a death of hope.