Maybe tomorrow...

I sit with my legs crossed pretending to read a book.  Waiting.  I feel confident and beautiful.  I feel invincible.  I read the same words over and over.  I glance up from this ruse.  The entrance yields no one of note and yet I note her…A woman in her mid-twenties in skinny jeans and a loose, flowing top.  She’s tall and she glides.  I don’t glide.  I wish I glided.  I wish I was tall.  My confidence is waning.  I look down again.  The words on the page are scrambled and jumbled.  I don’t even remember what book I hold in my hands when I see him.

He approaches the counter.  I hear him order…a tall cappuccino.  I manipulate his words in my head and try to hear him say my name instead.  The young barista smiles at him.  Her eyes seem to stay on him as she turns away.  I watch him.  I beg him to look at me.  He looks down.  I imagine he is my equal in every possible way that I would want…intellectually…spiritually…passionately.  He has to be.  Please let him be.  Please let him see.  The machine whirs as it foams his milk.  He waits patiently, eyeing things on the counter and in the glass displays as if he is going to get something else.  He never does.

She cheerfully returns with his order.  He pays.  My heart starts to race.  Time is running out.  He hasn’t looked.  Please…I’m over here.  Before he turns away from the counter he takes a slow slip.  I love that he can’t wait to taste it.  I imagine I am the milky foam floating on his coffee.  He sucks me in slowly and I pass over his lips into his mouth and linger there before he swallows.  Satisfied he wipes my excess from his mouth.  He turns to exit.  I am undone.

My heart drops into my vacant belly and pounds loudly in my ears.  He is leaving and not seeing.  I feel small…confidence shattered.  I dissolve into liquid and puddle on the floor.  He his outside.  Walking away.  Further away from me with every step.  If he only knew me.  If I was taller I would say hello.  If I was stronger I would ask for his number…or something…anything.  But I am nothing but a wet spot that needs mopping.  And then I will be covered with a little yellow sign that reads…’Caution Wet Floor’.  The only record of my existence in this shop…that yellow sign.  My book is picked up and placed on the counter in case I show up again to claim it.  Maybe tomorrow.