Forget Me Not

Not Our First Meeting

 I could feel his eyes on me. Even before I looked up from the change in my palm, I could feel it. In a shallow attempt to ignore it, my own eyes traced each coin that rested on my palm; which I held flat in front of me. I examined them with a similar intensity to the gaze pointed my way. My head hung, I could feel the strain on the back of my neck. At first I really, truly tried to ignore those eyes.

I had looked over these coins so many times, each dent and scrape on them was familiar by now. When I closed my eyes, I could see them stamped on the back of my lids. It was expected. A weathered penny. Two nickels. One shiny, surprisingly so. One dull, disappointingly so. Eleven cents.

One penny.

Someone is staring.

One nickel.

I can feel their eyes.

Two nickels.

They're not looking away.

Eleven cents.

I felt pricks on the back of my neck. Not from my head hanging but from those eyes on me. I couldn't shake the feeling yet I couldn't tear my eyes away from the coins in my palm to find whoever was combing me over with their gaze. I inhaled slowly, counted the coins once more then closed my fist around them, returning them to my pocket. I kept my hand in with them and felt their steely metal brushing past my fingers.

The air in the station picked up, the train was coming. It seems as if everything rises a bit as it approaches. It's as if the station sucks in a large breath, before belting it out when the train rushes through the station. I felt myself sucking in a large breath. Electricity coursing through me. Soon I could hear the screeches of the brakes on the rails. The lights must have been appearing in the tunnel to my right but I still hadn't looked up. I stared hard at my shoes, it's not that I didn't want to see the stranger who was watching me. It's not that I didn't want to throw back a glare at the person who was picking me apart with their gaze. It's just that the train was coming and that was the hardest part.

It was mere seconds away at this point. The screaming brakes seemed to be the only sound in the station. Filling it up. Pressing in on me on all sides. I felt as if I was on the verge of heaving. My hands shook and juggled the coins around faster in my pocket. I sucked in one last gulp of air and looked up.

Across the tracks, on the opposing platform stood a boy, about my age- give or take. He stared back at me blankly. Then his eyes widened. His mouth dropped open and he gaped at me. My heart lurched in my chest. It was such a short moment that at the time, I couldn't even process it as it happened. The vision of him stamped itself in my mind, little did I know, I would be rifling through that moment again and again. His hair was tones of autumn spun with gold and bronze. His skin tanned like a warm afternoon despite the increasingly biting cold outside. I've never been looked at that way before. The way his eyes zeroed in on me. The way they seemed to focus and his pupils blew, not unlike a camera lens. The way he drank me in, for everything I was and everything I still am. I've never been looked at that way, with the kind of recognition a person holds for someone they've picked apart and reconstructed a hundred times. I'll never be looked at that way again because that look wasn't even for me. That look was directed at me and it was bursting with love and longing but it wasn't meant for me. He looked at me like I could part seas and stop wars. He looked at me as if I was something he had lost, despite the fact that I was something he had never had. He looked at me with love and sorrow and some things that I'll never understand. The train sliced between us and I could no longer see him.

The doors slid open with a hiss and after a moment I stepped carefully on. A few people were speckled throughout the train and I took the first seat I saw. I peeked over my shoulder and spied the boy standing on the platform, he looked disoriented and his head whipped back and forth as he eyed the train, searching up and down the length of it.

It should have been a relief. How could I ever reciprocate everything his expressions conveyed? But knowing that, that I'll never feel that intensely, that fully and that deeply for another person- or have someone really truly feel that way about me... that thought...was deafening.

Neither of these things registered as I stood across the platform. They didn't register as he stood on the other side, anxiously looking down the tunnel. And they didn't register as I sat on the train watching him, now that he couldn't see me. I was no longer the one being pierced by his gaze. He was now the victim of mine. I could see him squirming beneath my it now, searching for me. I was rarely put in a position of power and already I was abusing it.

Dark retro glasses rested on his slim nose, rimmed on top with exposed glass on the bottom. I found the boy intriguing the way that you might find any cute boy intriguing as an nineteen year old girl, standing across the platform with his high cheekbones and his bored expression- at least it had been a moment ago. Nothing about him was particularly eye catching, not the way he stood, his lazy posture, or the way his hair was combed, messily to one side, not quite curly, not quite straight, tousled just right.

The graffiti on the wall behind him was much more attention grabbing. A large piece depicting blooming blue flowers. They were painted so vibrantly and realistically that for a second I truly thought they were spilling out of the wall and right onto the floor of the station. Instead they were just on the wall. Forever captured in a moment and unchanged by the events transpiring in front of it. He wouldn't have held my attention for any length of time if he hadn't been watching me the way he had. At that moment something in his expression monumentally changed so much so that for that tiny sliver of time I was captivated, his bored expression had gone and desperation and relief replaced it. At the time I hadn't realized it but it was recognition that flashed in his eyes. This perfect stranger recognized me. My face registering was what had caused his eyes to widen and made him nearly leap forward to me. That would have ended the story right there though- due to the oncoming train and the electricity wired across the tracks.

I turned away from the glass and closed my eyes, feeling the lurch of the train as we left the station.

The story would be over without him because my story isn't the one that's important. I was only a witness. It was the boy across the platform. His story was worth telling.