imagine if
the man she likes
I saw a girl on the Underground travelling with the man she’s in love with and the girl he likes. They were Italian. Crisp faces. Hers, naturally, a little long and sad; the other girl’s, naturally, coquettish and confident. He had a lovely outlook, solid stance, good beard, and kind expression; compared to them he was tall, he stood unselfconsciously, his feet well planted. Oh, how she loved him and craved for his attention, his acknowledgement. The other girl was wearing a cute mini. On the platform the girl who loved him poked him as if playfully, but he barely saw her; the other girl made a lot of play with the straps of her little backpack. My girl couldn’t help herself, she went close to him and buried her face in his chest, pretending she was joking, but really soaking up some of his smell and his heartbeat, his masculine solidity, his illicit love that would never be her own. Your heart would have ached to see her. She followed him onto the train like a little sister, dragging her feet. The two girls were, purportedly, friends and she had to pretend to be interested in what the winning girl was saying, which seemed endless; the loser girl was lacklustre, she’d lost confidence, she could see the headlights of disaster barreling right down the tunnel towards her. They leaned on opposite sides of the carriage, the man, the two girls, and you could see he had forgotten they were travelling in a trio. She peeled his heart open with her yearning eyes. She longed for him and gazed and gazed. And longing does no good at all. I could have told her that, if she’d asked me; I thought of saying so. But she wouldn’t have believed it, we never do, just as he couldn’t see the love standing in front of him, yearning for every morsel of his blessed being.
19 comments on “the man she likes”
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I know the aching longing to be recognised as there. As worthy…
I do too, it’s a horrible pain. I have found learning to combat this teaches me solid self-worth, hurrah. I see you.
Just magic, as usual, dear lady
thank you, Romana! x
terrific stuff
thanks Melissa ????
…coquettish….lovely x
merci Suzy, thank you for commenting x
I love this.
Thank you for saying so, Megan. Makes me happy.
And what woman cannot relate to that post? High school. The boy down the hall at his locker. Dreamy. I stood at my locker, daily, waiting for him to go to his… he was quiet, shy.. but so dreamy. He noticed others, but never paid attention to me. Ah.. the painful memories of youth. The loser girl will learn – or not. In any case, I loved reading the essay.
Och the pain inside the self of not being seen by someone we long for! Once you sense a kinship with that person it feels all wrong – if only dreamy boy had been not so lost in his own dreaming world & had lifted his head to see what (who) was standing in front of him! Though maybe… perhaps others didn’t notice him noticing them, either, if he was a shy observer.
Thanks for reading, Kim.
Crushingly beautiful!
Thank you Jonathan, how wonderful.
Wow, I love the collection of feelings you gather watching people with your empathetic heart. I could see this doomed little trio in my minds eye.
The decades I’ve spent pining with unrequited love. I feel her pain, her anguish, and her despair. Yet, knowing my life, I would reach out to her, only to be rejected, again, To tell you the truth, it’s getting damned tedious. Beautiful writing, in which you, again, capture the essence of people and their situations with minimal verbiage. You have a great eye as well as a wonderful way with words.
Dear Brendan, thank you for sharing your painful story. It just sounds such a waste. A living, breathing, empathic love unable to be expressed. I am sorry. I can imagine it gets tedious as well as agonising. Maybe the woman you love knows something about herself that you can’t know, which would make the two of you incompatible and unable to be happy? Or else she has qualities of self-regard or some other kind of superficiality that might make her at close quarters less worthy of your love? Perhaps I am imposing optimism in a situation I know little about. It’s just painful to picture all that affection going up the chimney into the heedless sky.
I re-read Pride and Prejudice recently, and this reminds me of Miss Bingley. She’s so mean minded, but so pitiful, leaning over Darcy as he writes a letter and commenting every few minutes on his handwriting. She could almost not even exist for him, however much she yearns and flirts and walks around the room…
Oh, and taking up the second volume of a book he’s reading, only to toss it aside with a yawn and a speech about how she so dearly loves reading! Aye, Miss Bingley is vivid. Her character teaches us more about his than almost anything else, I reckon. It’s almost as if she is what Elizabeth mistook for him.