Imperfect Stranger.

I know somehow, in the deeper, darker parts of my brain, that I didn't actually know this girl. Though I spent the whole night and much of the rest of the week trying to place her in my reality. But she didn't fit. Not from school, not from the neighborhood, not from a foggy childhood memory. But it's been almost a decade now and I can still see her.

This smokey pool hall was a fixture in my life toward the end of my high school experience. It was a watering hole for people my age but much, much cooler than me. I'm really not sure how I managed to come and go so casually, stacking quarters on the cracked wood veneer counter top in exchange for a set of pool balls and a chewed up bit of chalk. I couldn't play pool, either. A proper poser in my flannel, hiding next to my best friend with her cigarette balanced delicately between her fingers. She loved anywhere she could smoke inside. It was that kind of place.

We went almost every weekend but this girl - I had never seen her before and I never saw her after. Maybe she was with one of the college-aged guys who ran the place? Maybe she'd just wandered in from the cold. I have no idea. She lingered near the back, by the snack bar and cash register. The first thing I noticed was her size, or rather lack thereof. She was thin not from any sort of dedicated workout routine or healthy lifestyle. Honestly, she had the appearance of someone who'd been through some shit. She perched cross-legged on the bar in her high-top converse and shredded blue jeans. A black hoodie zipped halfway up obscured most of her form and she looked as though at any moment, she could be swallowed up by the thing. I'm not so sure she wasn't trying to do just that. For a while she kept the hood up, darkening her narrow face. Without even realizing it, I was staring quite frequently in her direction. I wanted to talk to her so badly. I can still feel the ache, the sensation that I was being pulled in to some gravitational force surrounding this girl. She had something important to say. Or maybe I did. But I was not that bold. I'm still not that bold.

Finally, she pulled the hood back and out tumbled a mess of blonde, unbrushed hair. As if she could feel my curiosity, she turned in my direction and our eyes collided, only for a second. She smiled ever so slightly. Her deep-set eyes were a striking color, like the downy feathers on the ears of a blue jay. She was beautiful and for some strange reason, I felt like crying for her.

I choked down my fluttering breath and looked away from my friends, laughing to conceal the sudden flooding of my eyes. We left not long after and I rode home quietly, deep in thought about who she was and where she'd come from. Wondering where she was going.

Why, I wonder? How does a perfect stranger stick in the mind like that? I shared a room with her for maybe ten minutes and I don't know her name. A perfectly imperfect stranger caught at a glance from across a stodgy pool room when I was 17. I wonder how different my memory would be now if words had gotten involved. Maybe it's for the best that they did not.