for rocket

.

That man I saw at the bus stop doesn’t bother me anymore. I only saw him once and I never saw him again. I didn’t tell anyone about him, but I called my mother, because he scared me that much. We never talked, he didn’t even look my way for more than a few seconds. But he terrified me. Not in a horrorshow way, but more like something out of a Hollywood romantic drama.

In fact, I felt reduced to a prototype of a character surrounded in orchestral strings, in a movie that flunked at box office opening.

He was blushing, looking cute. Posture at the ready, he was dressed right for my character. I (characteristically) looked like a walking corpse with haggard updo, right after the menial errand the script demanded I do in order to bump into him like this, a man with a bag, coming and heading for nowhere. But he (characteristically) didn’t seem to care, also caught offguard. A small smile, a handful of frames per second, that perfect slow motion where the sun made him look like a hero. We’re moving in time with the script, but its unscripted, so I get scared.

His shy eyes met mine for a few seconds, then away, as if to say “Oh man, are we in this scene?” Then mine interrupted “No, I can’t be in this movie right now,” and I walked right off set, into my car and drove home. I’m glad I never saw him again, glad I never talked about it after that day.

But of course, as I drove away, I turned around one last time. He was hailing a cab.
He waved. I waved back.

We were always fine without each other.