Soundless Connection Across the Coffee Shop

She strolls into the café I frequent so regularly, full of grace, elegance, and a pale face dressed in dirty blonde hair. As I watch her approach the counter, almost gliding on air, her curvy figure enters my frame of vision, I can't hear her order or Born to Run playing through the sound system.

Instead, I sit in stunned silence with awe, as my eyes track her every move as she sashaya from one end of the counter while choosing a sweet treat to the other end to collect her warm and comforting cup of freshly brewed coffee.

Life seems to exude from her. Like a beacon of hope her bright and beautiful face, her very aura lights up the rainy Tuesday atmosphere of the coffee shop afternoon lull. Slowly she glides across the floor with all the exquisite radiance of a classically trained dancer to a small circular table in the dark corner of the room. Surely, I am not the only one who is marvelling in her glow.

Everything seems unimportant, yesterday's news. Everything muffled silent like the sound of a television or laughter in another room, as I watch her from my window table. As she looks up from her phone, she catches my badly hidden secret glances. From that moment on we are locked, engaged in a silent dance across the coffee shop, to the melody of A Sky Full of Stars.

Never before have I wanted to brazenly make my way across a public space to approach a complete stranger than I did that day. But, as we sit drinking our coffees with fifty others between us, we gesture and playfully speak volumes in silence. As her eyes they sparkle in my direction, her eyelashes flicker and her cheeks redden a little as she presses her lips to her cup.

Creating a special moment together. A moment of swans crafted from paper towels, intricate hand movements and air writing our names. Our smiles increasing as our short-distance distraction from the mundanity of the coffee house conversations becomes the highlight of our day.

Even as she bid me a fond farewell with a kiss blown on the breeze and a curtsy before she walks out the door, and I wonder if I ever will see her again, I still treasure the moment, the time, we had when we connected without voice or sound.

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Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: Long-form prose-style meet-cute-style acrostic. I hate the term meet-cute, but it's the term that best describes the scenario. Not based on a true story. Fiction.

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