Understood

I wonder if she knows she’s the reason for my existence?

I see her once a day. On my way work. 8:54 precisely. We’re on different sides of the street. An infinite barrier of pavement separating us. She's going one way, I'm going the opposite. I'm following a single-file procession to and from my place of employment with the rest of the drones. Dull. Uninspired. Overworked. Underpaid. Unhappy. She's on the opposite side of the street, carefree, without a purpose, as far as I can tell. Just walking. Her skin glistening in the sunlight. Smiling. Laughing every so often.

I look at my watch, and right on time, there she is. Every morning. Pacing quickly across the hot pavement. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She's the only beautiful thing I've ever seen. I steal glances every so often, to try to catch a glimpse of this surreal flower that has blossomed from this damned gray metropolis. I would never look directly at her though. She'd never understand.

One morning, as I was trudging along my usual path, I got too greedy in my thievery. She was wearing a yellow dress, and a daffodil in her hair. I shot a quick glance, which seemed to linger no more than a millisecond longer than I intended. But by the most microscopic chance, our eyes happened to meet. But I didn't look away. Neither did she. Everyone seemed to disappear. It was just us. No one else.

In those few moments of silence, what I wanted to do was tell her that she was the only thing that mattered in my life. I wanted to tell her that I live in a dead end world, I work in a dead end job, I come home to a dead end life, and I wake up to dead end morning skies. I wanted to tell her that while I plod along in perfect synchronization with the rest of my comrades, whom I care nothing for, I wait for 8:54, when she appears from the horizon, and effortlessly glides her way over the cracked concrete, lighting up the monochromatic surroundings, until she's out of my sight again. I wanted to tell her that if she so much as acknowledged my existence, I would throw off the shackles of the single file line that has compromised my existence since I was old enough to work, and break the age-old concrete divide between us just to be at her side. I wanted to tell her that my feelings for her transcend any boundaries that could ever be set. I wanted to tell her that she is beauty. I wanted to tell her she's the reason I exist.

What I did was smile.

She understood. She did the same.