That Girl

Sometimes I want to be that girl. Everyone knows the one; a fey creature that seems spun out of myth instead of reality like the rest of us. You spot her in the middle of a crowd or on a busy subway platform passing you as she gets on and you get off, or maybe you'll see her at a bonfire with friends as you walk down the beach one summer night and you're filled with the need to meet her. You don't know what it is exactly that catches your eye, maybe it's the way she smiles as if she has a secret she's never shared with anyone, or maybe it's the way she moves as if air was water and you can't really describe her appearance or clothes except to say they're somehow an extension of herself--as if it is more than clothes she's wearing but some piece of her soul she wove into a dress and disguised as something mundane, but it still glimmers and shines and clings to her form in a way that says it's so much more, that she is more than the bodies that surround her. It's unlikely you will cross the expanse of strangers or subway platforms or barren sand to form an introduction, so instead she remains a distant figure that haunts your memory long after she slips beyond your sight. Sometimes you'll remember her in quiet moments when you're driving alone late at night with only the streetlights for company, or other times in the middle of a boring conversation that seems to summarize your mundane existence, or when your grandchildren ask you if you loved anyone else before you met their Granny and you'll wonder what would have been if things had gone differently and fate had seen fit to give you a second chance to actually meet that girl. She's the girl actresses try to emulate on the silver screen, the one screenwriters and authors write into all their books--trying to pen their hero into a relationship with her since they know she'll never enter the story of their own lives.

Most of the time I want to be myself--more of an observer than someone hoping to be seen, noticed, remembered...But sometimes I want to be that girl the one that catches your eye--and in those times sequins seem appropriate, even at a river's edge.