every day.

you feel unpretty. unbeautiful. unspecial. every day. you see this body, this face, and you know that there is nothing good worth the price of the sight. but for you there will always be the One Day when a stranger steals nervous glances in your direction as you both hurry onwards, never considering the choice of slowing down and being apart from the stream of mundaneness flowing through the inner workings of Tottenham Court Road Station. the One Day when you don't notice how he's kept by your side since you got off the train and snaked your way through the Central Line pipes and into the Northern Line tunnels - at least not until your retrospective vision clocks in for the pre-bedtime pondering hour. and oh, how surprised you look when he asks if the train that is about to pull itself into vision stops at Waterloo.

'Umm...'
you look at the countdown to check the destination. you see what it says but it doesn't register.
there is a map of the remaining stops on the Southbound route right in front of him. you look at it. he does not take his eyes off you. you see that Waterloo is indeed on the list of stops. right in front of him. why the heck did he ask you that when the answer was staring at him?
'Yep!' you say with a smile.
And off you flow, along with the rush-hour and home-bound crowd.
As if nothing happened. As if nothing more could have happened. He's far behind you now.
You're gone.
Away from the five seconds of a cliché, a sickeningly 'romantic' chance that could have been made into something if you had only stopped for one more of those seconds. and then one more again. maybe stayed a minute or two to see what would happen, if anything. 
but that's not you, is it.
you're imagining how it was. you're fantasising about what it meant. again. what if you'd just gotten on the train with him and ditched the empty evening ahead of you. what if. what if what if.
don't think too much of it, everything is always as it seems at face-value. no more than what it simply is. at any cost, you mustn't let yourself hope.
as far as you're concerned, he just asked the nearest passing stranger a question.
as far as you're concerned you're just not pretty enough for that story-book nonsense.
you're not beautiful enough to steal the eyes of a stranger off his tracks.
you're not special enough.
you're not worth it.


and yet you are so fucking wrong.