Don't stop believing

Questa storia in inglese. Sounds good. N'est-ce pas?

Here I am.

Alone in the waiting room of a railway station in some small village of some country. Wooden benches and smoky air. The ticket office is closed for several hours. I'm waiting for the midnight train. The last one. I don't even know where that train is going to.

How I, born and raised in the big city, ended up here, what I'm leaving behind, which are my plans for the future. All these things are not relevant to this story. Because this is not my story. It is not even the story of someone else. It 's the story of an encounter. An encounter of two glances. It 's a love story with a duration of a blink. But as intense as if it were lasting for a life time and more.

She comes in almost by stealth. Lost in a thousand and one thoughts, I do not notice her presence until she sits in the row of benches in front of me. I look at her, but her gaze is directed to the dirty floor made of beige tiles. Probably you wouldn't call her a beautiful girl. But her sullen face, framed by brown wavy hair, has something that touches your heartstrings.

She seems a local girl. She may be eighteen, not much older. Who is she and where is she going I don't know and probably will never know. Just as these things cross my mind, she looks up for the first time and I see her blue eyes, clear as the sky in a sunny summer afternoon. Clear but sad and full of loneliness. Reddened as if she had just finished to cry.

Then finally our eyes meet. I see a flash and then I hear a storm. The two of us are holding hands in the pouring rain. We hug each other. And when, after a second or a century, we part we are looking at the see on a plateau under a tree with coral red foliage and with branches that look like rised arms imploring to heaven.

We kiss. And when, after a century or a second, our lips part we are jumping in the crowd of a concert in a medieval square. Then someone pushes us and we fall to the ground.

But rather than on the cement of the square we fall of the soft snow in front of a mountain hut. We look at each other eyes as if there was nothing else in the world except us immersed in the snow. The two of us and a butterfly that flies in front of us. We both follow it with our eyes until it rests on the departures board. 

Two minutes to midnight. I don't know which images she saw, but I know for sure that she felt what I felt. I can read it in her eyes. A love story as long as the flutter of a butterfly.

She, just a small town girl living in a lonely world.

Me, just a city boy born and raised far from here, running away from something or someone.

Both waiting for the midnight train. Going anywhere.