a craigslist-style missed connection

I won't lie to you: I have somewhat of a habit of falling in love with strangers. It's the books and movies that make me do it--and you, you were cinematic and literary in the very best way. You had a romanticism to you, a face that Daphne du Maurier would've compared to a painting, would've used as inspiration for her next tragic hero. I could see you in an old manor house, hiding a dark secret, waiting. For me? I'm not sure. Waiting for someone, certainly. What else do the men of Gothic novels do, when they aren't waiting around for uncertain girls to fall in love with them? You were enchanting and devastating to me, walking absentmindedly in your long coat, while the whole world buzzed around you. I saw you for only a moment, and you never even looked my way. Our stories are our own; we aren't meant to cross paths again. Yet, I sit and I write to you, a love letter you will never read, because I have heard too many songs and seen too many low-budget romantic comedies and dreamed too many dreams of beautiful boys, beautiful and graceful boys who play the piano. It's better this way, you see. I often have said that I wish the characters in the books I read and the movies I watch missed their chances, never met, were too distracted. I wish they smiled and went their separate ways. For though I love the flirting, though I clutch my heart and sigh the first time they kiss, it always leads to hardship. In life, especially, there would be this hardship, and sooner, too, because you will not be that man that I want. I will not have to wait for months of bliss to pass before I am disappointed. Were I to meet you, really meet you, I doubt you would be the man I am seeking. I doubt you play the piano, and your long coat is a facade, and you've never read a classic novel, not since high school. Your profile may be lovely, but you have only God to thank for that. Most importantly, I suppose you have a girl at home already, waiting to kiss you, knowing you for more than the dashing imaginings that your appearance brings to mind for silly romantics like myself. Though I do wish, in a little way, to be that girl, I am more than happy to be the far-off writer on the corner, with wind blowing her hair across her face, making a Polaroid-worthy moment for another dreamer. I am content to see you from afar, and write about you, and think of you as whoever I want you to be. We will be lovely strangers, happier because we missed each other, because we never knew the sadness that comes with realizing that not all love stories start in this picturesque way. You will go home to your lady, and I will go home to my solitude, and fall in love with another stranger, and another. I look forward to a thousand missed connections. I still think of you, my never-to-be-lover, for the romantic in me refuses to let go of you. What I hold on to, of course, is not really anything more than a story that I created around a moment, around a face--but it was a most poetic face. You had a most poetic face.