You, Assassin

Irrespective of how successful, how uncomplicated your life is, a certain restlessness arrive in tiptoes and when an opportunity presents, shoots up shudders of dread and doubt into the very nucleus of your deepest, most secret insecurity.

The list would reel in your mind in multiple shadows of panic, regret and loss:

What if you let true love pass you by? What if you didn't recognize it smiling warmly in the laundromat, cordial in the hallway, indecisive among the pile of lettuce in the grocery, staring far and lost in thoughts in the airport lounge, approachable in the frenzied food court, because you are blinded by the pursuit and fail noticing it when it's staring right back at you?

What if all these years you misconstrued the true one with convenient substitutes just because the substitutes were around at the precise moment of your most yearning hunger?

What if you've had it in your hands but were too foolish to honor its presence because even if you do your kisses were empty and you embrace while wishing your arms were longer? When you endure tepid conversations over a cosy dinner while your eyes dart from the cutlery to the doorway in anticipation of a dashing trade up to walk in?

You see this is a dilemma I suspect happens to all but have refused admitting to. You fall into clutches of tenderness with same simplicity as unraveled leaves drifting in the gentle hum of summer breeze. It is an annoying habit, a compulsion, like a noble, earnest pup too enthusiastic to beget affections.

You would be inching in crowded trains, and, emerging from a reverie, spot someone. Waves of warmth for that person would kick in like violent surge of waves on the torso of thoughtless shoreline rock. You would begin to roll the reels of probabilities in your mind and they become vivid images of dancing, selfishly choreographed in your head: what would it be like to have meaningful conversations with this person? If you run out of conversations would silly ones do and still not lose a beat?

Is this recognizable? You sit in a bus, overwhelmed by timidity, and censor that strong inclination to spark a conversation. You sense a strong connection with the one next to you and you shift restlessly because even the most innocent brush of skin wires your consciousness with shivers of electricity. You sense that the object of your enraptured attention is furtively waiting for blinking signals like a vagrant fisherman would for a lighthouse on moonless midnights. But you allow logic to override your instinct with fabricated excuses of personal space and the right to be left alone. You begin to nullify the rising billow of feelings by flashing scorecards of impossible requisites and ideals.

So you sit there, basking in the fierce gush of warmth and nip its germinating bud before you make a fool out of yourself. You get off the corner of your stop, cast one glance backward, and mourn.

You walk on, hollow, consoled with the familiarity of convenient substitutes.