Yet, Unsaid

            “You know, I’m in love with you.”

He smiled at the silent sentiment that had often crossed his mind these days whenever he thought of her. He spent more time now thinking of her, now that she was out of his life, absent from the everyday.

Yet, he continually pondered whether she had ever thought of him during this time of anti-social social distancing. He realized her genuine smile for everyone that stopped by the busy Penn Station kiosk to pick up an ice-cold refreshment before heading home.
           Yet, that same smile; it shined whenever he stopped by

Always running late, trying to catch his train, he had never caught her name.

Did he really love her?

Probably not.

Yet, in this time of uncertainty, he so often thought of things undone. Mortality suddenly seemed so real, something so defined on the faces of everyone, something that a forced face mask could never deny.

He sighed, and dreamed of one last hurried happenstance meeting. Her smile undoubtedly obscured underneath that damned, unwanted, unasked for mask would still radiate.

“You know, I’m in love with you,” he’d tell her, his own smile beaming behind the cloth covering, bringing the banter they had loosely shared just a bit further forward.

What did he have to lose?

What did anyone in this time of realized impermanence have to lose?

Things left undone? That was one thing, but things…

Yet, unsaid.

“You know, I’m in love with you,” he vowed to utter aloud.

The first on a list of some 40,000 somethings in his life that he still wanted to do.

Tom M.

May 5/22/20