To the girl at the corner store.

I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number.

They’ve been coming in for months now with their large coats and boots and pressed suits, knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will walk in and you’ll be here.

I know it won’t be long though, and soon they’ll be coming in with tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons or afternoons in the park, all wearing t-shirts and flip flops and they’ll find you…gone.

You feel as though your life is happening somewhere else without you, and that no one here understands. As you watch customers come and go you find yourself wishing you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count dollars, count designer sunglasses and handbags and scarves, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.

You think that in time they’ll remember. Once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you they’ll think— who was that girl? and, I wonder where she went?

But you don’t count on it.

You’re tired of counting. So you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and goodbye. The only thing you know you can count on is the fact that nothing changes. Until it does. Until you make it so.

Because you know that it’s easy to love people in memory, looking back on them in the safe and comfortable light of retrospect. The hard part, you realize now as you begin to tally up the regrets, is to love them when they are there in front of you.