2026-06-06 # Two Months I remember you from the before. You — hair dark, short, and yet, the way you smiled. It made me realize something I had never allowed myself to feel, a thing that up until the moment you stepped onto that train had no shape nor name. And then suddenly it became you. I could not run. The train doors already closed behind us. You walked in — not towards me —and I thought I could no longer breathe if you actually came closer. Then you headed over to another row, where someone was already sitting. A man. You did not sit next to him. You sat on his lap, facing him. And then you smiled at him. My world stopped. That smile was not meant for me. That much I know. I would never have had you smile towards me. It was not a thing I could hold. You smiled at him, and I did not see his face, but from the way your eyes looked, from the way he looked up at you, I knew he, too, was in love. The train started to move. Just a couple stops for me, and yet the ride felt so long. You never left his lap. You sat like that — was it truly comfortable? Was it because you needed to see him so close, that the curve of your lips could almost have reached his? I could not turn away, and at the same time, I could not stand looking at that. I looked over to my right, to the window, as the train went underground. The reflection that stared back at me: a girl so ordinary, tired lines under the eyes, two months before a relationship that would wreck me for the next twenty years. But at that moment I did not know that yet. I only knew that if I could, I would have come up to tell you that you were the most beautiful girl I had never known. And that I would not let you come anywhere near me, because I could not forgive anyone who would ever hurt you, and I did not know how not to hurt. The train stopped. It was my station. I got out. I did not look at you.