From the Journal of a Cynic

by =tina-go-lightly

He held her hand in the shadows, in a nanosecond of half-crazed lust. She didn't notice, or if she did she attributed it to cheap champagne and a dash of almost evaporated romantic idealism.

Funny how soul mates (if you'll pardon the expression) brush past each other, never questioning the way people shuffle in and out of each other's lives. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl fall in love, girl realizes boy is too boyish and dumps him for a married man who advertises men's cologne and has no time for his five and a half year old daughter.

Love. It's an almost invariable idiosyncracy in the genetic sequence of the primates currently known as humans. Although modern emancipators may swear they're in it for the sex, we all have an innate urge to be adored.

Subject A walks into her apartment after an afternoon of mindless aeorobic activity carried out within the confines of a stale matress and a rickety kitchen table. The phone doesn't ring and it doesn't matter because she has her evening lined up in a decadent penthouse.

Subject B lingers in front of the mirror, searching for life in a hostile environment.

Seventeen years ago, Subject B tripped Subject A on the playground. Subject A pushed him into a puddle.

Were they meant to be?

Maybe.

But the past is fast gone and the could have beens don't matter.

The moral of the story?

There isn't one. There never is. Conclusions are always drawn by the objective observer and, let's face it, no one is entirely unbiased.