Metro People - The Reader and her Infinite Sadness

It's been a while ..and I thought the 'Metro People' project is dead and buried, unfinished but closed, till lately when serendipity stroke. This is an exception, an individual, solitary portrait, not one enclosing a bunch of people sharing a certain pattern of traits.

So there she was, my muse, a Jane Doe, that normally wouldn't draw too much attention on her. That face expression has been haunting me ever since that day, so I need to be as precise as I can in my portraying of her. A woman in her early 30s, tall, skinny, frail , almost translucent. Short , straight, light brown-reddish, thin hair, thin eyebrows, big, light colored eyes with an intelligent sharp look. Thin lips, thin, straight nose forming a low degree angle - an almost androgynous beauty.
It was like all the fragility and vulnerability of the world has found shelter under her skin. Her skin - light, dry, easily freckeled, if it wouldn't be for the first traces of time passing, one could believe she landed here from a far, distant planet. The marks of time and a sensitive skin were showing up especially on the forehead, there where the sorrow dwells and on the mouth frame, there where obviously in her good days, smiles have brightly raised. But I didn't have the chance to see anything like a smile. No, it was not one of her smiling days. Actually it was obvious like daylight to me, that she could barely hold her tears from running. And from the moment I noticed that, I couldn't take my eyes off her. I felt guilty, it was none of my business to stare at her, to admire her sadness, I knew I should have looked away, just like everybody else. But fascination beat guilt and curiosity beat shame.

Did I say she was reading? Yes, and I even saw what. She was in the middle of Elizabeth Gilbert's - "Eat , Pray, Love" book, which I happen to have read about 2 years ago. The middle should be somewhere at the 'pray' part, where Liz gets in touch with her spiritual side. There's nothing to cry about in those pages. So the book must have been just a portal to her inner sorrow, her own troubles, her own demons, those responsible for the dark circles under her eyes. She kept raising her eyes from the book and out the window, as if she was looking for a distraction. Seeing the morning traffic, people rushing to work, people carrying their own crosses - that was supposed to come in her rescue and stop her from tearing out. Her technique worked but the arched eyebrows, the softly shivering mouth showed a lot of effort in this hiding. This pure "child-woman" was not trained to wear a mask for the world to see.

I couldn't help wondering if it was her sadness and that mystery that surrounded it what made her presence so magnetic, her beauty so untouchable. And if I have seen the same girl in other circumstances, with a glowing , shiny face, would've her happiness intrigued me as much, would've her beauty talked to me as much?
It doesn't matter, those 6 minutes, those 4 metro stations were precious, an inspirational bliss and God knows if I could've survived exposed to this astral attraction any longer than that.

Nevertheless, I do hope she isn't sad anymore, wherever she is and whatever her reasons were. And I must silently apologize to this unknown stranger for intruding in her world for a few minutes, I just felt an urge to utter my fascination for the sweetness of her pain.