“Sometimes We Only Get One Shot.” Finding Love On The Subway.

by Simone Davis

My name is Simone Davis and I’m from New York City, New York. She was dressed average. Just big winter jacket, sweatpants and rain boots. The train comes and we get on the same train together and I keep looking up at her and I keep looking down at my poetry book and writing and then I keep looking up at her. I think to myself, “Okay, wait, I should say something to her, I should say ‘You have a beautiful voice.’” I don’t say anything because I’m too shy. And I’m thinking, “This girl will think I’m crazy for just walking across the train and talking to her out of nowhere.” Number two, she’s out of your league, she’s way too pretty. And number three, she’s probably straight. I convince myself that if she gets off at the same stop as me, I’m going to say something to her. So it’s the stop before my stop and she ends up getting off the train there. So I’m heartbroken because I think, “Dammit, I missed my shot.” And just before she gets off the train, she hands me a note. The train doors close and I look down at this note and the note says, “I’d like to read it/hear it when it’s finished.” And it has her email address after it. And I’m like, “Yes, I won!” Two days later I sent her an email. And the email says, “You have a beautiful voice, I met you on Jay Street” and she emails me back. She says, “‘Simone’, that name, it suits you.” I take 7 days to email her back after that first email. I email her finally with a response and I hear nothing back from her. A week goes by, two weeks go by, three weeks, a month later, “Hey, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that day, can we meet up?” I get no response. I crumple up the note she gave me and I throw it in the trash. And I’m like, “I missed. I missed my shot.” A year and a half goes by after I crumped up that note. And one particular relationship kind of hit the and I was really upset about it. My friend’s like, “Come on out, man, I got a raise, I got a promotion, I’ll buy you a drink, let that girl go.” I’m like, “Fine, okay, I’ll go out.” I’m sitting there having a good time with my friends and in this girl walks, the girl from the train a year and a half ago. I start telling my bros this story and they’re like, “What? What? What are you doing still sitting here, go in there and talk to her, go in there and get her, you know?” She’s dancing on the dance floor and I’m like, okay, I gotta use what I’m good at, I can’t just walk up to her and act like she remembers me, I have to use something I’m good at. I can dance, so let me try to get her attention by dancing with her. So I dance around her and we end up kind of dancing with each other and she looks at me like, “Yeah, I’m feeling your vibe, I like how you dance.” And she says, “What’s your name?” And I’m like, “Simone. Oh, you don’t remember me?” And she’s like, “No, don’t remember you.” “Okay, yeah, it’s not a big deal, we met a year and a half ago on the subway, it was a long time ago, it’s no biggie, you know.” And she goes, “Oh my God…” and she grabs both of my cheeks with her hands and she’s like, “The poet! That’s it, take my number down right now, we’re going on a date. We’re going on a date!” We take this ferry ride, it’s beautiful, the sun is shining, it’s a great day, we swing in the hammocks on Governor’s Island, we have our first kiss on the hammocks, it’s just this beautiful, like, the clouds parted for us and the sun came out and the rainbows and everything, it was just the most perfect first date I could have ever imagined. That girl has Goddess energy. You’re not going to find someone like that to wait around for you to do your mistakes and to do your fuck-ups and stuff like that. You’ve got to come to somebody like that with that kind of energy with 100%. Take that chance, take that risk on speaking up because unlike my story we often don’t get second chances. Sometimes we only get one shot. It took one person to step up and to make that introduction to make this story happen.

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