This train is half-empty and I am happy to sit, but not so happy when I realize someone has spilled sweet coffee all over the floor and it has now dried into a tacky glue sticking my boots to the floor. I pick my head up from this distraction and there he is again: the Oddly Beautiful Boy. He is sitting across the aisle from me, only one person between us. I have never been so close to him before. His eyes are closed, as always, his hands folded into his lap and I can see that he is maybe 25 years old, tops. I feel like a vampire, sucking at his beauty, watching him dozing, looking at the bump of his nose, the curve of his mouth, the angle of his jaw. I realize I have seen him maybe five or six times in the past year, about every other month, and he is at an age where a change of job, love interest, apartment is imminent and would change his commute. I may never see him again. “You have an amazing, beautiful face. Whenever I see you on the train it is a delight,” would be what I would tell him, if I dared, but I don’t dare, even though I do not want anything at all from him, and now here is my stop and it is time to go to work.

After work, on the evening F train back to Brooklyn now I am drained from the day. I am distractedly aiming my eyes towards a youngish man sitting adjacent. But really I am thinking about the urban cowboy across the way with his ridiculous palomino suede cowboy boots and ostentatious cowboy hat, there is a crashing landslide of music cascading in my head, I am anticipating dinner at a charming bistro with a friend. The youngish man has hair as shiny and rough as a bale of straw, and it is falling into his eyes as he looks down into the book in his lap. Suddenly he jerks his head, flips his hair out of his eyes and as he does so his eyes flash around towards me. I am caught looking, our eyes meet, his are enormous and the palest blue of winter sky and for a moment I am pinned, my heart beating. Then he drops his head back to his reading, and the next station is mine and I leave him and the cowboy with the doors sliding closed behind me.