An Imagined Love

On days when I am stifled by the walls of my room, covered in posters of past and current musical heroes (and a massive burger poster stolen on an expedition in mexico) I take the initiative to go for walks in crowded areas. I enjoy malls, cafes, and any other areas filled with people. On a C-train ride to downtown I see a young woman. Before I can continue I must first explain. On my travelling walks I like to look at people, and they become an escape. I see interesting individuals and I imagine them being best friends, intimate lovers, and unparalleled enemies. 

The young woman on the train clearly had lived a difficult life. I don't believe she was much older than I, but she had a worn look of a woman who has been forced to work diligently her entire life. She was being ticketed by a peace officer for not having in her a possession a train ticket to allow her to ride the train legally. As the Officer was writing out her ticket, I saw her hands picking at each other in a cannibalistic manner. Her nails where tearing at the skin of her thumb, which was dry and scaly from some unknown work. 

I pictured myself being in her life many years before this moment. I was shy and in awe of her deeply green eyes and reddish tinged haired, and found her soft hands (for I believe she once possessed them) comforting as they would run through my unkempt and curly hair. We would have our first kiss behind the school gymnasium, which would undoubtedly be ruined by a male friend of mine who would run gleefully from my glaring stare. We would consummate our love during a run away adventure from our parents, drugged with a euphoria that one would imagine an escaped convict would enjoy. 

As time went along, our lives would drift as our economic classes clashed with our futures, I, destined for the universe of university, as she, caught in a whirl wind of lower class politics and family responsibility would feel ashamed and unworthy of me, a man from a different world. We would fight, we would cry, we would hold each other, but the end was near, and we would break each others hearts. It would be done below a bridge, when she would make the ultimate sacrifice and tell me that it would not work out. My pleading and my begging when unleashed upon her to no avail would act as knifes into her already tattered heart.

She would leave appearing tall and strong, and I shattered and unkempt, but we would both feel the same inside. I would not understand that she felt as if she was weighting me down, keeping me from a future I was meant to have. She gave me up, not because of spite or lost love, but because she was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and allow my future take precedent to hers, and my ultimate happiness be at the expense of her knowing she let us go forever. The years would dull the ache in my heart, and I would go to university, meet new people, and grow to be a smart, bright, and well educated young man. I would ride the train daily to go to school and one day I would see her, sitting with her frame dejected and withered, broken down by a lifetimes worth of pain, regret, sacrifice and misfortune. I would feel the ache in my heart once again, but I would not move to her, and pretend I do not know her, as she begs for me to say hello, to help her, love her, and hold her as I once did those years ago.  On that train, picking away at her skin, with a peace officer writing her a ticket.