She was in a car, paused at a red light, when a bus slowly pulled up beside her …
It was one of those older city buses, painted white, a bit weary-looking, as if it had seen too many monsoons and memories. Most of its windows were cracked open halfway, resting in a kind of in-between. But one window stood wide open. And there, beside it, sat a young man …
He had AirPods in, so she assumed he was listening to something, music maybe, or a podcast, or perhaps just the sound of his own solitude. His face was quiet in the way people sometimes are when they’re thinking of something that doesn’t need to be said …
There was no moon that night. Just a vast, bare sky stretched like a curtain of silence …
And she smiled to herself …
Not because she knew the boy, not even slightly. She didn’t know his name, his birthday, his favourite tea, or whether he believed in stars or horoscopes. But something about him … reminded her of someone …
A young man she had been exchanging emails with for years now …
They called each other penpals, and that’s probably what they were. Words had passed between them like little paper boats, floating across years, without a single meeting, or even a real photograph …
Though she feels that he’s ‘full of emotions’, thoughtful, sometimes a little too serious, sometimes surprisingly light. He’s a practical young lad. And though she knew so little about him, nothing really concrete, she still felt like she knew him …
And somehow, seeing this boy at the bus window stirred up the memory of one of his old lines, one she never quite forgot: ‘If someone can’t read between the lines, you gotta unfold their blinds’ …
She had laughed when she read that. She smiled again now, under the faint flicker of a streetlight. And his presence stirred something, like déjà vu, like a soul remembering a face from a dream …
Her car was still. The bus beside her, alive with passengers. The boy at the window, lost in the sky …
And she …
She almost wanted to wave, but she didn’t …
Instead, she sat there, lost in her own musings
Soulmates cross lifetimes, meeting again and again, each time in a different form.
Perhaps in one life, he was the brother her soul leaned on. In another, the friend who understood her silences. And maybe, in a life half-forgotten by time, he was the one her heart called home …
In this life, she found him in letters, digital now, yes, but no less tender. Somewhere beneath the playful tone and thoughtful replies, she wondered if fate was quietly weaving its magic …
She was still thinking …
After all, soulmates don’t always arrive with introductions …
Sometimes, they just show up at red lights …
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Roksana Tales 