Fourteen Seconds? More like lifetime.

I don’t remember what I had for breakfast that day. I couldn’t tell you what time it was, or even what song was playing in my ears. The weather was fine, I think. The kind of weather you don’t really notice not cold enough to complain about, not warm enough to remember. Just ordinary. Like the day itself. Like me.

But then I looked up.

She was walking toward me on the opposite side of the street. Just one of many. The city was alive, humming with its usual chaos cars rolling past, people lost in their own errands, their own appointments, their own little worlds. She was a stranger, just like the rest of them.

Except she wasn’t.

There was something about her. Something I still can’t name. And I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve sat with the memory of her more times than I care to admit, hoping that if I turned it over enough in my mind, I could make sense of it. But it wasn’t about sense. It was about feeling.

She didn’t see me. I know that. Her eyes were focused on the path ahead, unbothered by the people who rushed past her. She walked slowly, as if she had more time than the rest of us. Or maybe it was just grace. There was something rhythmic in her step, like she was dancing to a song only she could hear.

She wore a yellow gold uniform, or just yellow,—I can't remember exactly. What I do remember is how it moved with her, swaying just a second behind every step. Her hair was dark, loose, and soft-looking, a little tousled from the wind. Not styled. Not trying. Just... as it was. Beautiful in that untamed, unintentional way.

I stood frozen in place. Not because of her beauty, though she had that. It wasn’t the kind of beauty you find in magazines or on a screen. It was quieter. Slower. The kind of beauty that doesn’t ask to be noticed, but somehow insists you do. She wasn’t posing. She wasn’t performing. She was simply there, and that was enough.

I watched her for maybe fourteen seconds. Maybe less. I don’t know. Time bent around her. The street noise faded like someone had turned the volume down on the world. It was just her. Her and the soft rhythm of her walk. Her and the ghost of a smile on her lips. Her and the way she looked around not searching, not scanning. Just… observing.

She crossed the street before I could even think of what to do. For a brief moment, she was close so close I could have reached out. So close I could have said something. Anything, but that's not how reality works.

I knew.

I just stood there. Held still by something I still don’t fully understand. Maybe fear. Maybe awe. Maybe I knew that if I said something, the moment would shatter. That whatever spell she’d cast would break the second it was touched.

She passed me. I turned my head to follow, but I didn’t chase. I couldn’t. Something in me knew this wasn’t that kind of story. She disappeared into the tide of people. A red light changed, a bus roared past, and the street resumed its rhythm.

But I didn’t.

I walked the rest of the way home in a fog. I kept thinking about her. The lines of her face, the softness in her expression, the certainty in her stride. I didn’t know her. I still don’t. I never will. But she lives somewhere in the back of my mind now, walking that same street again and again in a loop I can’t stop replaying.

It’s strange. How someone can leave such a deep impression without ever knowing you. How they can become a chapter in your story when they were only passing through their own.

Some nights, I wonder if she noticed me. Just for a second. If she ever thought, “Who was that person standing so still, looking at me like I was the last good thing on Earth?”

But I doubt it.

She didn’t slow down. She didn’t glance around. She didn’t have a reason to.

To her, I was just part of the backdrop. Another faceless passerby in a city of millions. A silhouette blurred by motion. A flicker of nothing.

But to me, she was clarity.

I’ve written about her in notebooks I’ll never show anyone. I’ve painted her in my head a thousand times each time slightly different, each time impossibly the same. I’ve even dreamed of her. Not in vivid scenes or romantic clichés, but in fragments. Like flashes of color behind closed eyelids. Like memory pretending to be something more.

Some might say I made her up. That I’m holding onto an illusion, a projection, an idea. Maybe I am. Maybe she wasn’t even as beautiful as I remember. Maybe the light hit her just right. Maybe my mind needed something soft to hold onto, and she was in the right place at the right time.

But I don’t care.

Because for the first time in a long time, I felt something.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

She reminded me that wonder still exists. That in a city full of strangers, it’s still possible to feel seen—even if you weren’t. Even if it was just in your head.

She reminded me that the world can still stop spinning for a moment.

And when it starts again, you’re never quite the same.

I haven’t seen her since.

I walk that same street often. I don’t admit that to most people. I tell them it’s on my way to work, or that I like the coffee shop on the corner. And maybe those things are true. But they’re not the reason.

The real reason is hope. Faint, foolish, persistent hope. That maybe I’ll see her again. That maybe this time I’ll say something. That maybe this time, the story will change.

But the street has a different rhythm now. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe that one moment shifted something in me forever.

And maybe she was never meant to stay.

Maybe some people are just meant to pass through.

To remind you of the weight of silence.

To show you the outline of what your heart is still capable of.

To give you one perfect, painful, beautiful minute.

And then disappear.

So that you’ll remember them.

Not for what they did.

But for what they made you feel.

And that, somehow, is enough.

I’ve tried to forget. I’ve tried distracting myself with people who actually know my name, who speak when spoken to, who make plans and take photos.

But none of them were her.

I know how that sounds. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds unfair. But the truth is, they were too real. Too present. Too possible.

She, on the other hand, was a maybe wrapped in mystery. A what-if painted in soft light. A story I never got to finish. Or start.

And that’s the thing—she wasn’t an ending. She wasn’t even a middle. She was the beginning of something that never happened.

And beginnings are dangerous. They hold promise. They hold potential. They haunt you with the idea of what could’ve been.

I sometimes imagine a version of me that stopped her. Who crossed the street. Who smiled. Who said, “Hi.” Who asked for her name. Who got to hear her voice.

What would it have sounded like? Would it have been soft? Confident? Curious?

Would she have smiled back? Would she have been startled? Annoyed? Would she have brushed me off, or paused long enough for something—anything—to unfold?

I will never know.

That’s the ache that follows me.

The weight of the unasked question.

The silence of the unspoken word.

The echo of a possibility that only lived in my mind.

And yet… it lives.

She lives.

In me.

In the memory of that street, in the fold of her coat, in the rhythm of her step. In the fourteen seconds that passed like a whisper—but etched themselves like stone.

And maybe that’s what love is. Or something like it. Not always loud. Not always shared. Not always returned.

Sometimes, it’s quiet. Unseen. Unrealized.

Sometimes, it’s fourteen seconds on a random street.

And somehow, it’s enough.

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