The not-happening

Some time ago, not a long time but still, I was sitting on the train home and in a compartment a bit further down sat a most beautiful girl. Every time I passed her she smiled at me and I smiled back at her, but not a word was spoken between us. We were both sitting alone at opposite sides of the carriage, still we only exchanged smiles. Half way through the journey she was gone, I can't even remember where she got off. For the rest of my homeward journey I contemplated on how I should have approached her, I ran through countless of opening lines and what were to follow those and what should again follow those, all too late. I still wonder what we might have had in common and what kind of music she listened to, and what movies she liked. I have travelled by the same train several times since this first encounter, but I never saw her again.

The not-happening was so sudden
that I stayed there forever,
without knowing, without their knowing me,
as if I were under a chair,
as if I were lost in night.
Not being was like that,
and I stayed that way forever.

Afterwards, I asked the others,
the women, the men,
what they were doing so confidently
and how they learned how to live.
They did not actually answer.
They went on dancing and living.

What determines that silence
is what doesn't happen,
and I don't want to keep on talking,
for I stayed there waiting.
In that place, on that day,
I have no idea what happened to me,
but now I am not the same.

P. Neruda