Maybe I've been hard to reach, I've been too long on my own.

There were many passersby to spectate but I sat with a hollow misery in my chest, a dark chocolate mocha tucked to the corner of the table beside my laptop. I had walked there with a heavy heart, eyes and lips red and swollen from tears as I listened to a song I had long since forgotten from my tumultuous youth. The day was unseasonably warm, the sun an ironic twist against my face. I deliberated on coffee or a nap, swayed by the promise of a new drink scrawled in red chalk. Something new would be good, I thought. 

And so I sat, lethargic and brooding, curled up in a metal chair on the cornerside. A woman I had seen once before approached with a blonde dog with sparkling, inquisitive eyes. 

"Do you need a place to sit?" 

She shook her head, smiling. "No, thanks, I'm just looking for somewhere to tie her. Can I tie her here?" 

I nodded in assurance as she fastened her companion to the table, thanking me as she ventured for a bevarage. I waggled my fingers at the dog who eyed me with an expression I could personify as passive confusion as she awaited the woman. 

"can I pet her?" I'd asked as her owner returned. 

"Yeah, of course!" I ran my fingers over creature's fluffy coat as she inspected her master's hands for an anticipated treat. 

It was the kind of innocuous exchange that would have lightened my sprits ordinarily, and it did to an extent. But fatigue overtook me as I sat at the cornerside, feeling as though I was awaiting something, anything, that wouldn't come to pass. I wondered if I stayed long enough whether I would encounter the long haired man with ink scrawled down to his palms once more. I ached for company and for something even more ambiguously attainable. I found myself restless, in personal hysterics, limbs tense to mitigate the occaisional welling of my eyes. Couples with linked hands passed me by in a montage of human observation as I remained stationary, ambling over my keyboard for something substantial to do aside from staring at my screen with empty eyes and heavy metal blaring in my ears. There was nothing else awaiting me beyond my dreary spectation, no greater outcome. I hoped my wanting might beacon someone to me, perhaps the man with the deep blue eyes I had so long ruminated over never asking the name of. I thought of the words I had seen on the paoer this morning, 

Cancer screening. 

I could handle the burden, I know I am fortunate enough to have the ability to push things from mind, yet I choose to brood, I find company in the misery that so often finds me alone. Though I am given the gift of endurance I choose to find upset that it is accompanied by the freight of loneliness. In truth, I do not want to be strong anymore. I wish I did not have to be. I only hold on to the hope that my sorrow will be recompensed in the form of a passing stranger who may or may never cross my path.