...Or Am I Standing Still?

I raised my hand, seconds from his shoulder. His orange clad shoulder. I had to. I had to tap him.

But after that? After his attention was secured? Then what? Nervous, awkward conversation? A clearly out of the way "Hello", only to turn and scurry off?

Why must I do this to myself? Why must I make simple moments so.... complex?

I let my hand fall to my side, keeping my eyes where it would have landed on his shoulder, still hearing my mind try to articulate what I would say to him. What on this planet I could possibly say to him. I squeezed between other bodies and his, and just as I cleared his presence, the fog left my mind, and I saw how truly innocent conversation just then would have been.

I felt, incapable of explaining how, him look my way. I felt the discontent in his look, saddened I hadn't done what he'd wished me to do. But that, of course, was just me being over-optomistic. As if he could possibly miss what was as simple as that. And, should he truly yearn for my attention so much as I felt he did in that moment, would he not speak to me of his own accord? He's an outgoing boy. He's confident, funny... Wouldn't he do that, if he wanted it that bad?

I abused myself as I continued to walk. It was so simple! A "Hello"! Really? Had I really just run away from that. I turned back to speak to him, I turned back to make up for it; he was accross the room. No longer in the heap of people he had-dare I think it-placed himself among in order to have that run-in with me.

And it didn't happen. Because of me.

The song "Standing Still" by Jewel comes to mind now, as I lay her thinking back to my thick-headed moments of the day. And his as well; he should equally take the blame, right? Was it really on my head to innitiate the conversation? Isn't he just as equaly capable?

But, as Jewel sings in the vague chambers of my mind, I'm reminded that this song is about a boy passing her by. A boy leaving without her. A boy moving on, leaving her love-bent in the dust.

At least, that's what it's always meant to me.

But now, here I sit, unable to do anything but picture him and me standing on either side of the dark dirt road Jewel usually strolls down in my mind's eye as I hear this song. I'm unable to do anything but imagine us, him and me, watching life pass by on this road. Watching everything we're vaguely wishing for just drift right past.

And what happens when we continue to let it? For this is the second day in a row we've both set our paths up to cross, and somehow, and the fault of one or both, at the last moment these paths narrowly miss. What happens when it's gone?


I'm not too keen on letting this slip away before I know for certain it has no potential.

But for now, I guess I'm standing still.