Girl in the City

She won't look at you twice. Her world moves too fast. Yeah she's on foot, and sure the street's crazy crowded, but she's storming through it at her own intense pace. It's not a walk in the park, and it's not a run. It's not the way she jogs in the morning. She's slower than the jog, but stormier. The bags clutched and held close around her being, instead of making her feel laden and weighed down, feel more like propeller mass . She's the one lending them weight, it would seem. It's not hurry, it's just the speed of her life.

When she sits at Barista, peering at other tables, waiting for her coffee, she doesn't look like she's sitting alone, and she doesn't look like someone's coming to join her. Her looking at you is neither intrusive nor inviting. As you're about to realise, it has nothing to do with you.

Lying on the bed at night, a girl has a thousand things to think of. Grossly underestimated numbers those, but it's not a thousand things on this one's mind. It's just those two. Or maybe three. It's what's driving her life. It's what she's building her life to be. Day by day, hour in hour out. Her stormy walk through people and things yet touching none, her laser focus on things around her, her last few lingering minutes on the bed before she gets up in the morning, they are all reflections. Reflections more of this time in her life, than of her. This is the time of sweat and hair damp with sweat. This is the time when you either make it, or you settle. And she's not settling. Not yet, not now.

And yet, she has those moments of aberration. Not long-lived, not emotional. As logical as any. And yet, aberrational. Irrelevant, but only temporarily. Demanding, but only if she lets them. Visions of future, and glimpses of uncertainty. Blurred, future-tinted images asking to be cleared. Irrelevant, as I said, but only temporarily. She won't compromise, not now with the present, and not then with the future. One thing at a time.

A coffee shop is an amazing place. There are people, and there is coffee. And it's one of the few places where you don't really need company. Not that she lacks company, just that she has had much better. It's alright though. A coffee shop is a coffee shop.

You should see her shopping. It may not sound like much, but she's at the top of her game right now. She's the Major General of shopping. Her eye is sharper than ever, and her tastes severely exacting. She always understood money, but now it's her own. It's a whole different ball game.

Her new friends are mighty impressed with her, just like they've always been. Her bosses would count as friends if they weren't her bosses on the side. Her problems are real, but life's doing well. At least it makes sense now. It kind of always did but at least things are moving now. They kind of always were but at least now she knows what she's after. Not absolutely completely, at least as much as she does anyway. It's good, it's fine. Not half as bad as she would have imagined.

Look at her walk on the sidewalk. Bags and folder in hand. Cutting through the crowd, pupils dilated in thought. All systems running, all engines at go. She could be lost, but not today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe when she can afford it. For now, she walks. At just the speed of her life.