I don't believe in fate, but sometimes I wonder if certain people are meant to be seen. Not known, not spoken to—just seen. Like they were placed in front of me for a reason. A reminder. A lesson. A story waiting to be caught.
I remember one evening—early spring, the air still undecided between warm and cold. I was standing near a bus stop, waiting for a signal to change, when I noticed them. A man with a duffel bag, and a woman clutching his coat like she was afraid it might dissolve. They weren't speaking. Their silence was too heavy for that.
When the bus arrived, she stepped back, and he hesitated. Not long. Just a flicker. Then he got on. The door closed. The bus pulled away.
She stood there for a full five minutes after he was gone.
I wrote later: "Sometimes love doesn't ask for forever. It just asks for one last look."
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Then there was the boy with the drawing pad. I've seen him at the park nearly every week, always seated on the far end of a green bench, sketching. He looks young—early twenties maybe, with a head of uncombed hair and a way of sitting that suggests he's trying not to exist too loudly.
The first time I noticed him, I followed his gaze and found her—a girl in a yellow coat, walking a dog that seemed to have a mind of its own. She had no idea she was being drawn. Or maybe she did and didn't mind. There's a quiet kind of tragedy in that.
He never speaks to her. I doubt he ever will.
Still, every line he draws seems filled with a kind of love I can't quite explain.
"There are some people we love only in silence," I wrote. "And maybe that's its own kind of devotion."
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But not all the stories are sad. Some are just... messy.
Like the couple near the flower stall last weekend. They were arguing—loudly. About money, maybe. Or in-laws. Something real, something raw. I remember her throwing up her hands and walking away. He chased her halfway down the street with a crumpled bouquet in hand.
She didn't stop right away. But she did turn. And when she laughed—God, it was like sunlight through thick clouds. Not forgiveness. Just love breaking through.
I stayed longer than I usually do, just to see how they found their way back to each other. It reminded me that even the loudest fights can end in soft landings.
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I carry these stories with me like borrowed coats. They don't belong to me, but they've kept me warm in quiet moments. Some I imagined. Some I only caught glimpses of. But all of them mattered. Because each one—no matter how brief or broken—was love, lived in its own language.
And that, I think, is worth paying attention to.