The Many Lives

She sipped her coffee on the streets of a place not known to many

She watched the couples around her giggle and kiss under the soft light

She watched some sit in silence and others who buried themselves in the virtual world

She looked at all of them in awe. She wondered what their stories would be like

She imagined the perfect love story of the couple next to her. She pictured them to be some high school sweethearts who eloped. 

 

The man who sat opposite to her seemed lost in thought. He stared at his half bitten croissant. She wrote a backstory in her mind; maybe he was away from this family and he missed them dearly. Or, he sat there trying to deal with a broken heart; or he lost someone dear to him. 

The family on the other side seemed together yet distant, the wife was constantly tackling the three kids and the husband was yelling at someone over the phone. Maybe he was a busy businessman on a weekend getaway. His wife might have been a pretty school teacher who gave up her job to look after the kids. She seemed to have buried some kind of deep sorrow in her eyes.

The waitress seemed to be running a different race. She ran to the tables, trying to collect orders and then delivering them with a smile on her face. Her phone kept ringing and it was trying it’s best to distract her. Maybe it was a possessive boyfriend, or a romantic date or her mother who wanted to check on her. 

The coffee shop was full of life and as she sipped her coffee trying to write a backstory for each of them around her, she lost herself. She saw a bit of herself in everyone around her. She saw herself as the girl in love who couldn’t take her hands off her boyfriend, the wife who gave up her career, the man who seemed to have lost someone; the waitress who was trying to make a living, a woman sitting there and imagining the lives of people around her. And in a few minutes, she lived a hundred lives on the streets of a place not known to many.