Tug

I don't know what I feel more - loving the sudden jolt of familiarity, of knowing, or, hating the reminder, the knowing - that I felt today, seeing. Suddenly, I am arrested, all my attention funnelled by some random stranger at a near distance whom, by some strange, strange chance, oozes of you. And I stare, fixated, at how her back curves like yours (her arms, body, limbs - they're packed like yours), at the way she gets out of her car (the sort you'd approve), and shuts the door, at how she stands (slightly akimbo), how she walks, how her hair sways the way yours does. How she is made so that her size must always at first belie the confidence within, like you, though the misconception is instantly recognizeable to a trained eye.

It sounds a little freaky, but it isn't like that. It's the small things, things you know but never think about, about someone, things that you know but don't realize you do until you do. And it makes you realize, too, how much you miss. So that you end with nothing, but remnants of memory, and pangs, of love and just a little hate. As the image whose likeness has you hypnotized grows smaller, and the distance grows bigger, now that you are on a tram, boarded fleetly at the last possible second before it pulls away, and that figure of deja vu is nothing but that.

It began a startle, and prompted transfixion. And then a glimpse... was no more than a memory of a glimpse.