There’s a moment I keep turning in my mind, over and over again. It happened in Albuquerque — you’ll recall it — and I’m writing this for you, though you don’t know I exist. This is me hoping by some tiny chance you will recognize yourself, or maybe just feel what I felt. A missed connection, but one that still echoes.
It was a Thursday evening. The sky had that dusty New Mexico light, like cotton candy stretching thin over the horizon. I was on my way home, wandering city blocks that seemed half-disappearing into the early dusk. I saw you at the cross-walk ahead, wearing those boots that scuffed lightly on the pavement, a faded jacket draped over your shoulders. You looked like you carried stories in your eyes, maybe a little tired, maybe hopeful.
I had stopped at the light, waiting. You did too. For a brief second, our steps synced: you shifted your weight, I shifted mine. I glanced over — you toward the western sky, I toward the lamplight. Then the walk signal changed and we moved. You peeled off to the left, toward a row of street-lamps casting long orange shadows. I kept straight. And just like that, the moment was gone.
But here’s what I remember most: you paused momentarily, looked back over your shoulder without realizing it, as if something tugged at the edges of your mind. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even wave. I couldn’t. Something held me frozen in place — part fear, part wonder. I watched your jacket swing for a heartbeat longer than necessary, then you vanished into the weaving rows of parked cars and moving traffic. The street swallowed you.
That night I realized I didn’t know your name, your origin, or even your destination. I only knew the imprint you left on that ordinary block in Albuquerque. I’ve been back to that same intersection countless times since, hoping to re-catch the memory, hoping to see someone with the same boots, the same twilight presence. But every time it’s different — the jacket a different color, the walk a different rhythm. The city keeps turning, but that one scene stays paused in my mind like a photograph I can’t print.
Maybe you felt something too. Maybe you felt a faint tug of recognition when you looked back. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe I was just a stranger in your periphery, another face in the fading light. Yet something about you felt like a half-written story I didn’t know how to finish.
Do you remember feeling the air shift just before the light changed? The hush when the cars paused, and the hush that followed after you walked away. I remember how I took a single deep breath, smelled the asphalt warming, and wished I had asked you for your name. Just for a moment, to anchor that feeling so I could replay it easier.
Since then I’ve walked dozens of one-way streets in Albuquerque with my eyes searching — maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s hopeful. I want to find you again. Not necessarily to confess something big or dramatic, but just to say: “Hey, I passed you once. I saw you, and you mattered.” Because you did. You shifted a small ripple in my night, and maybe that counts for something.
I wonder where you went after you turned left. Was someone waiting for you? Did you get home safe? Did the twilight turn into something else for you — like music in the background, or the hum of streetlights? And did you ever glance back at that intersection and think, “Maybe someone’s looking at me”?
In a city of tens of thousands of steps, of lives crossing and recrossing, it’s easy to think we’re invisible. But that evening you weren’t invisible. You were a brushstroke of strange possibility in my routine. And maybe that’s the point: missed connections aren’t always about “could’ve been.” Sometimes they’re about “did happen,” in the quiet margin between my world and yours.
I won’t wait forever at that corner, watching shadows stretch. But while I do, I’ll remember the boots, the jacket, your glance back. If you find this — by some wild chance you scroll past the words and think, “Hey — that could be me” — then hello. I’m the guy who was standing at the light, looked at you, waited for the signal, and walked on. I wonder if you’ll remember me too.
If you’re wandering Albuquerque tonight with a memory of boots and a faded jacket, walk past the intersection for me. The street-lamps will still cast long orange shadows in that dusty dusk. Maybe our rhythms will align for just a second this time. And maybe we won’t walk away. Maybe we’ll stop.
And maybe we’ll say: “Hi.”
If you don’t see me, that’s okay. But thank you for the pause. Thank you for the breath-space between steps. It changed something.
— Some guy waiting to say hello.
