An Incomplete Love Story
My true love and I met for a moment, in a train station, after I had stopped looking.
I remember the moment like yesterday. I had just turned twenty-two.
When I looked up and saw his smoldering amber eyes staring at me, I gasped.
My face felt blood red, I looked down quickly, horrified, not knowing why.
Heard a laugh, male, sensual, gave him a quick shy glance. He laughed again.
My man gave me a jaunty wave, boarded the 3:35 train to Chicago, and was gone.
I wrote poems and songs about him for years, his amber eyes, his chiseled chin, his sun-kissed hair.
Lingered around the train station at 3:15 many days hoping to see him jump on another 3:35 but to no avail.
I thought of no one else. In my mind my 3:35 hero would ride up
In a silver sports car, honk once. I would get in and ride with him to my ever after perfect life.
At age twenty-five I saw my hero man again. He walked out of the ice cream shop where my sister worked.
I looked in my car mirror to make sure I had my face just right, fluffed up my hair.
Satisfied, I was about to leap out of my car and give him a big smile and a here-I-am look when….
My sister exited the ice cream shop, called his name, ran to him, and gave him a giant kiss.
She was my identical twin sister. They dated on and off for five years. He finally told her it was over.
She was sobbing and screeching and wailing when he and I walked into each other’s path and gave a look.
“It was you at the train station, wasn’t it?” he asked me.
My heart stopped. He had never put it together before.
I shook my head ‘no’, knowing now that it could never be.
But we were soul mates, and we both knew.
Written July 21, 2018
Contest: An Incomplete Love Story Sponsored by: Faraz Ajmal
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