the beauty of watching from afar

Never knowing when it started, I got used to the distance. The things that came between. The long road seemingly endless, the on and off crowds, the days, the nights, the trees beside the roads...the same lamp posts that nobody ever noticed. On the other side, are we doing similar things? In the nights, did we shared the same emptiness? The same thoughts? The same tiredness from dwelling in the city that we seemed too insignificant to be remembered.

I've gotten used to the distance. My first valentine. Feeling the comfort being out of the picture. I loved watching those in the pictures, coloured. Her eyes shone as he sang her the song. His song. I smiled. How beautiful. And he smiled, settling her around his arms. I settled in the empty seat in the gallery, the comfort of my far away view. My first valentine with the painter. The beauty of watching from afar.

I've gotten used to the distance. The silence. In the nights. With my words, my thoughts. I let my left walk on the streets, in the crowd, did our shoulders brush? Strolling in the breathing of the city. Would you have known that I was at the corner? The next exit to the quietness of the city's voices. If we have followed the directions, would we meet despite the crowd?

I've got used to the distance. Gazing at your windows, waiting for the beams in through the gardens. The warmth of sharing the same breath, the same nights, the same calmness in the darkness of this place. I'd always liked my views, from afar. I wouldn't need to expose myself to the paint and canvas to indulge in the pictures. The gentle heat from the orange and reds of the leaves and the cooling blues and greens of the sky would have been enough. I sat from afar. In the darkness, among the beams of the night sky, watching over you, in the picture.

I've always enjoyed the distance. Just as the readers got to know the characters in the novels, I had been reading a story of this busy city from afar. Among the people...among the crowds, of the characters. They never knew each other. Walked side by side, been on the same bus, the same streets, same bookstores. The writer's unpredictable ways of placing each and everyone of the characters. People from miles away, and those that had been sharing the same air.

I sat on a bench, watching the pictures in the gallery. Would you, in the picture, had saw me? Or would you, in the books had read about me too? Or am I the one in the books and the pictures?

If it is so, would I had fallen in love with the character in the books. Would you had saw me did so?

-va-