a craigslist missed connection
flowers vs. gardeners
today i offer up my latest craigslist missed connection:
you come into my east village cafe on a sunday evening around 5pm. it is raining hard, you are with a group of friends, you haven’t seen them in a long time, they’ve all been here but you, the glue, have been away. i get the impression they’re all a little bit jealous. maybe one of them is your girlfriend now, or at least she’s pondered the possibility in the shower late at night romanticizing your adventure. you’ve just gotten back from completing a peace corps mission in senegal. at least i think that’s where it was, one of the french-speaking african countries. i almost did this, several years ago, you remind me of a past life, an alternate timeline i too could be living in.
we talk over the espresso machine while i make you a regular milk cortado. to go. the perfect song plays on shuffle in the background. i regret not giving you my number when you go outside, but then you come back in, to see me? no, to use the bathroom, or maybe that’s just your cover, i have a line of customers and talking to me is impossible.
it’s the little head nod we give each other that makes me feel certain you’ll come back and visit me someday, when you leave i am not even sad at all. it’s not your fault, you don’t know my schedule, maybe you do come back but i am not there, i only work one evening a week, i normally do the morning shift. we are two travelers from planets on opposite ends of the universe, not meant yet to meet. it is a glitch in the matrix that we do. but if you are still out there in the ether. just know i’m not typically that into blonde people these days but i think i could make an exception for you. we had more to talk about, i feel certain. now in the mornings i play lover, come back to me — billie holiday’s version — with my cafe doors open to the crisp breeze, hope you’ll hear it like a siren call. you along with every other person in new york who i’ve ever felt romantic intrigue about. maybe not all at once though, because that would be overwhelming. what am i really doing at work if not waiting to be picked up.
i can’t help it sometimes, wanting to be a delicate flower. what is it they say, you can either be the gardener or the flower in a relationship dynamic, never both? is this true? probably not, those kinds of black and white thinking metaphors never are. what i do know is that i have tried gardening one too many flowers in my life, expecting them to be able to garden me back. i like to garden, i do, but at my core i am a flower. it would be nice if two flowers could love each other, but then who would do the dishes at night. who would do the crying, who would do the listening, who would take the notes to write all the poems about the tragedy of the situation later.
this is the reason why missed connections never work, only one person is ever logged onto the void at a time. the other person is always away. busy being in reality, or at least browsing a different website. seriously. what are the odds both people check craigslist at the same time within the same geographical radius. very low i think. if you or anyone you know has ever found success from the site’s service please let me know, i would love to meet them.
devotion—putting someone in an exalted position—feels like empathy, in their shared sense of understanding someone deeply, but is actually the opposite. when wishful thinking becomes confused with reality, the real person vanishes, as does the entire world around that person. the thing you’ve been denied is always perfect.
-the rejection plot by tony tulathimutte, the paris review (2024)
to be clear, i haven’t thought about this boy in months. but it exemplifies something about romantic intrigue and art that i find slightly interesting. that’s all for now — ttyl.
