The Tale of Two Sarah's

Sitting in front of her, she stared at the glowing message on the screen: "We need to talk. Tonight. It's important." From Marcus. Her boyfriend of three years. Her partner, with whom she had made a life in their tight quarters of a Brooklyn apartment — complete with his guitar propped against the wall and her unfinished paintings taking up every available surface.

The doors began to close​ their slide.

Sarah-Who-Caught-The Train got in just before they closed, filled to bursting. She grasped a pole for steadiness as her heart rattled around — not from the near-accident, but because of Marcus’s text. On and off all day at the gallery, she’d considered the meaning of the word “important.” A job promotion? Officially moving in together? Or something more ominous?

Sarah was standing in her apartment doorway, watching Marcus move around. He had cooked dinner poorly, which was always a bad sign. "At that point I took the offer," he finally admitted. "The tour. Six months in Europe with the band.”

The morning’s coffee was a world away. "That's... that's incredible."

“Come with me,” he pleaded, desperation in his eyes. "We'll make it work. You can paint anywhere."

She looked around their living room. Her attention was caught by the gallery business cards on the counter. The letter accepting her into the residency program that she had gotten last week, which was a secret that he didn't even know it. The program that would keep her in New York for one year longer, helping artists she’d admired since she was a college student.” I'm unable to," she murmured." I'm not telling you to stay," came easier than Sara had feared, tears tracing down her face. "And I'm not going with you. I got into the residency. You’re both getting what you wanted.”

"So, is this the end?"

20 Sarah spoke in a measured voice "We don't have to stop. But we need to be honest. You tour without my stress. I concentrate without guilt. Maybe in six months—"

“Potentially six months later, we are completely different people.

"Maybe we are."

Three months later, another Sarah-Who-Missed-The-Train in her bigger, sunnier studio sold those same two paintings. She made those connections, wrote those pieces.

But instead of scrolling on Instagram at night, she messaged Marcus about how her day was going and he replied from his tour city. They talked less often over the next few weeks, unburdened and with a lack of resentment.

She had discovered, in the silence of painting, an eerie calm.

Eight months passed. Then a year.

But Sarah-Who-Caught-The-Train had an even bigger show coming up, and Potatoes was playing a big role in it. The reviewers, the dealers — the collectors were to come. She should have been thrilled.

But now, with what seemed more like Marcus’s apartment than her own for some reason, she sat empty. The residency had transformed her. Her art had evolved. Thoughts of that morning on the platform would not leave her. What if she missed the train? What if just a fifteen-minute delay changed everything?

Her phone vibrated. Marcus' message said: "Tour's 6 months longer. I might stay in Berlin.”

She responded, after a long silence, with two understated lines: “I’m happy for you.”

And she truly was. But there was only so much success could smother, and deep loneliness remained a part of her.

Then later, that night, saw an exhibition Sarah-Who-Missed-The-Train had. Same critics, same art collectors. Marcus entered unexpectedly, and as she observed visitors casting critical glances at her work, he walked in.

She gasped. “You belong in Berlin.”

"I was there." Thinner, hair longer and a new scar above his left eyebrow, Marcus said, “The tour was over. I felt the need to see you."

At her art show, they had stood together surrounded by paintings he’d never seen and discussed a life he’d only known through cryptic texts and video calls.

“I don’t want to make up,” he said quietly. "Just wanted to see what you can do. I'm proud of you, Sarah."

"I'm proud of you too."

"But?"

She smiled sadly. "No 'buts'. We both got what we wanted. We both chose correctly.” "Where did we go wrong?" and "Why does it feel like something's missing?

"Because we made mistakes." She motioned around the gallery. "All of this is reality. What you saw in Europe was the real thing. But what could’ve happened differently for us — that’s a possibility too. Just in a different sense."

Marcus nodded thoughtfully. "Similar to parallel universes."

"Something along those lines."

They finished the night speaking like old friends, and that somehow hurt even more than arguing would have. He kissed her forehead, not knowing that this would be his very last kiss and a kiss so common she rarely took note of it but one that even now pierced her heart.

“In another life,” he said, “maybe we didn’t miss each other.

“Maybe it was,” she agreed, “in another lifetime. Both renditions were crafted. Both renditions thrived. “Each version was forced to find a way of being alone.

And on rare, tranquil mornings, every version would have stood with a cup of coffee and looked out at her city under the new sky that was, and begun to think about the other Sarah — the one who got off or stayed on the train that morning, who took different paths but wanted some of the same things.

The identical craving for significance. The identical dread of remorse. That identical desperate longing that the life you’d made was the right one—or at least a right one amid infinite possibilities.

The doors of the train were opened on time, at 8:47 a.m.

And everything that followed was just seconds and choices, and the terrifying freedom of divergent paths, each one bringing you where you wanted to go but neither entirely right.

And those were the disappointments with which both Sarah's had learned to live, unresolved as they still were.

The two Sarah's had known first-hand that this was what it meant to be human.