Grey pools

A romantic flash fiction. Short, weird and clean.

Huge puddles stared at the sky with their grey eyes wide-open. The children of tears, grey pools mirrored their mourning mother. People walked around them, not to step into the mirrors of the sky. Not to disrupt their silent grief.

A girl of no significance stopped staring into one of these mirrors. The reflection painted her teary features grey. Nobody seemed to notice her or the reflection. The rain hid her tears well.

People hiding beneath their umbrellas, or in their phones. Or both. People hiding in themselves, from the celestial tears the sky cried over them. Most people never saw anything even if they looked, and some who did see, walked around the grey pools, not to disturb them. Not to get their feet wet and cold from the gruesome tales the grey pools told. Tales of indifference, tales of lives spent in vain, tales of arrogance. Cold tales.

But the girl kept standing in front of the puddle for hours. Rain dripped from her blond hair, down her pale face. Slow drops touching her features, then falling into the puddle to touch her face in the reflection.

“Um… can I help you? I mean… you’ve been standing here for a long while. I’m not… I’m not stalking or anything, I work at the car wash over there, and… it’s a slow day, because of the rain, and I watched you standing…no! Not watched, I saw you…” a young man stuttered standing next to her in the grey pool.

She slowly turned her eyes toward his reflection. The grey pool revealed a skinny boy wearing glasses, raindrops drawing extra pimples on his pale face.

“You see me?”

“Well, yeah… I mean, I have glasses, but…why wouldn’t I see you?”

“Because I am invisible,” she whispered.

“But I see you,” he said staring at her, blinking intensely.

Finally she looked straight at him, not his blurred twin in the puddle.

“Nobody ever sees me…” She stared into the clear grey pools of his eyes, the surface of the glasses reflected her own face. A vague smile rose on her face like a gentle ray of sunlight.

“Um…do you want coffee or something? You must be freezing,” he said, staring at his feet, “my shift is over, so…”

They sat in silence while she stared at the steam rising from her coffee cup. The place was trash, but it was the closest coffee shop.

“So… why did you… about what you said,” he stuttered, because the awkward silence lingered.

“I’ve been invisible for years. Good girls don’t need much attention.”

“Um…” he gave a nervous chuckle, “well… sometimes,” he took a deep breath, “sometimes I wish I was invisible. I mean. I’m never good enough for them. They look at me and see only my…imperfections.” He gestured at his own face, with his hands shaking.

She didn’t reply. She looked deep into the clear grey pools of his eyes, and she saw him smiling at her while they walk together on a sunny day, she felt the warm touch of his lips, the beauty of his peaceful face while he dreams. She saw it all, a life she hadn’t lived yet, invisible hours of love, almost tangible, a life existing one smile away.

“I think I like your imperfections,” she said with the warmest smile, and touched his hand with her freezing-cold fingertips.

“I’m happy you’re not invisible.” The grey pools mirrored the warmth of her smile.