He swiped back his blonde hair with his huge hands. To get a better look at a beautiful woman walking past him.

The leaves of the bush heavy with snow, still swayed in the chilly wind outside the coffee shop. Just as he felt a little too warm in his fuzzy overcoat, the snow laden landscape outside ran a chill through his mind. Here he was sitting alone, while a thousand miles away, he pictured her sitting at her window, wondering where her life was going. A happy jazz song ’…you will always shine…’ pulsed through the background. A stark contrast to the environs of his mind.

What if they hadn’t met? What if he had stayed longer? What would happen?

It was that moment, when he walked away from her, catching a last glimpse through the glass shades, in the airport line, that her memories ran past his mind like the reminiscence of someone on a deathbed.

She walked away too. 22 hours of isolation would follow, with just a trite entertainment box for company. Two pulsating hearts, trying to overcome the negative void of absence. There was energy in love and there was energy in heartbreak too. It pushed everything down, against your brain, against your mind. Like anti-gravity. Cognitive dissonance.

“Would you like a painting? Would you like a portrait, Sir?” asked the lady outside the café.

“No not today. I don’t want a portrait madam. But could you draw me a heartbreak instead? Because if you drew me today, that’s what you would find” he thought to himself.

The song and the happy tourists walking past him were a contrast to the winter that had set in his life. He had come at a contradiction too early, too soon to understand. For the largeness and variety that the life and the world was, one’s life was too short. There was too much to do. There was too much to understand, too much to take care of.

Maybe he would win some awards. Maybe he would taste success but would this make it on his resume or blog or on any particular record of his life? Would anyone know that there was a huge part of his life, himself, that just walked away from him? Would anyone care to know? And then for everyone he would have to pretend that this was all easy, that he was here because it was meant to be. But would they know that behind the smoke screen lay a forced choice?