By Phoenix McKinnon
I saw this woman wearing oversized shades,
her beauty bright as the sun,
her newspaper folded like a quiet blade.
Yesterday’s dreams, today’s declarations, tomorrow’s desires
ran in neat, obedient lines—
size 11 Times New Roman,
small enough to rest between her fingers,
large enough to steady the city.
She stood cool, calm, collected—unbothered.
Casual like a blade: sharp, bold, certain.
Her presence did the simplest thing
yet somehow the hardest:
it turned everything else into background noise.
Heads turned. Mine refused to look away.
If she was the sun, then fine—
I would be the earth, learning her orbit,
timid, tilted, spellbound,
pretending I understood the seasons.
Her brow folded into a quiet riddle,
question or commentary—I couldn’t tell.
The shades hid the windows to her thoughts,
but her silence carried a hum,
a frequency lodged in my rib cage.
She was an enigma wrapped in a sweater dress,
and the dress fit the mystery perfectly.
“Hi there, sugar. My name is June.”
It rang out like a small bell in a cathedral of traffic.
Every syllable careful, measured,
like a tailor pinning cloth for the perfect seam.
I caught my reflection in the lens of her shades
and didn’t recognize my posture:
poised to say something,
do something,
be someone
who doesn’t choke on simple moments.
I should’ve let the bus carry her name away,
file the whole encounter under “city gloss”—
a shiny thing you glimpse once, then forget.
It would’ve been polite,
and safe,
and boring,
the kind of restraint I’ve practiced for years.
Instead, I stalled inside my own weather—
a fog bank rolling through the mind,
visibility: none,
forecast: regret with a chance of overthinking.
“You seem lost,” she said.
I was. I am. I might always be.
Tongue-tied, mind buzzing,
thoughts flaring then retreating
like a neon sign with a dying tube.
Seconds grew antlers,
their sharp points snagging on minutes,
and the minutes, stubborn and heavy,
threatened to become hours.
Time stretched thin as wire,
ready to sing if plucked,
ready to snap if pulled.
She asked if there was something she could do.
There was everything she could do
and nothing I could ask for
that wouldn’t sound like confession.
So I stood there,
performing a statue with trembling fingers,
like a deer auditioning for headlights,
pretending my name wasn’t tumbling
over the cliff of my teeth.
The bus pulled in, bold and careless,
its doors opening and closing
with the grammar of departure.
She stepped aboard without ceremony—
no goodbye, no glance back—
and why would she?
Some people are solar bodies
that never consult the planets
about their direction.
She leaves, and the bench remains—
splintered, patient, paint peeling from exhaustion.
I sit with the what-ifs like stubborn pigeons
who knows I have no crumbs.
What if I’d said, “Hey, June, I’m—”
finished the sentence, became a person with a name,
offered the small currency of introduction?
Would a compliment have been too forward?
Or would forward have been exactly right?
How many doors stay closed
because we never knock?
I pull out a lighter and a cigarette,
and my old man’s joke crawls back:
“Go to town with it.”
The flame blooms—a brief sunrise.
Paper hushes. Smoke sketches a thin horizon.
Relax, unwind, forget—
the ritual offers its cheap magic.
But June was the kind of sun
that refuses to set on command.
She keeps burning somewhere I can’t follow,
somewhere honest, somewhere ordinary,
which somehow makes it worse.
I think about the newspaper:
yesterday’s dreams,
today’s declarations,
tomorrow’s desires—
all dressed in fonts,
yet never quite fitting the lives they describe.
I think about her voice,
how it rang like a bell chime,
how simplicity itself felt luxurious,
like cold water on a fevered tongue.
If life has taught me anything,
it’s that gravity bends for certain strangers.
Their presence redraws the map,
tilts the axis,
Renames north and south.
Funny how a stranger can rewrite a day,
scribbling over your margins
with clean, deliberate handwriting.
Funny—and lingering.
The bench has learned my shape.
The bus disappears toward somewhere
that isn’t my destination,
and for once,
I let it.
I sit with the ache until it softens
into something I can breathe in
and exhale without thinking twice.
I promise the next sun
I’ll offer my name sooner,
seize the moment before it passes.
But for now, I watch the smoke
write a line I can’t read,
and I practice the sentence
I owe myself the courage to say:
“Hello. How are you?”
Phoenix McKinnon is a student at LaGuardia currently majoring in English. When not in classes, she can typically be found putting the myriad of stories that take residence in her mind to a Word document.
