That snobby one

Time travellers inspired piece
That snobby one

Another day, another dollar, I keep telling myself this. How many times have I said this but my optimism in becoming something more than just an ‘average Joe’ is waning? As I weave through my no-career-just-a-job-in-retail life I wonder what happened to my aspirations.
“My gap year so I can travel the world and then come back to Uni” I said years ago. Now I’m too lazy and apathetic about life, disappointed with my train-work-train-day-done-world to find joy. I’m too old for partying, but not yet old enough to settle down. I’m struggling to find aspirations in this prison cell of computing sales and public transport.

Following my dreary, insipid route from work to the train station, through back alleys and parks that have only withering trees and flowers. It’s a den of smoking, quick drug deals and sometimes violence between school kids. Everyone always has a wish-I-wasn’t-here-look. There are only ever glum-tired faces so like mine. Yet among the litter, graffiti broken people and screeching train brakes there appears a tainted light, a face that seems so familiar.

“It’s been so long! That surely can’t be her?” I say to myself. “How could this be? I thought you were a somebody, why would she be riding the trains at 6.30 on a cold Friday night?” I mutter susurringly. Your radiant beauty crosses in front of me. Your hair, long, straggly but flowing; jeans stained and torn. Your shoes have holes and you wear no socks but her face is clean and pretty. Should I speak to you? You once ruled the high school with your academic prowess, looks and charm and then the catwalks of Milan. How has this fall from elegance come about, this riches to rags? I can only speculate the demise of your fame.
You’re sitting down on the cold concrete floor, sipping from a bottle of flat coke; eyes still that shiny brown as you gaze off into the distance. You’re the girl that was above everyone else, not only on a self-placed pedestal but literally a top the podium for whatever you pursued. You’re the girl who had everything going for yourself and snobbed everyone who wasn’t deemed fit to behold your presence. Now resting upon a dirty bin at a gloomy train station surrounded by doll-bludgers and pack-a-day-smoko-every-five minutes café workers. Surely humbled by your plummet from grace, I assume.
I approach to ask of your recent trials and trepidations, follies and shortcomings. I step towards you, but you stand up because your train has arrived. It is also my train.

“What should I say?” I mumble under my breath, as if being close to you was a novelty as you were once something so sought after, like homeless after a hot meal, and I was somehow nervous.
I want to ask about your clandestine and mysterious past, but how awkward. “Uhm, hey you don’t know who I am but I know you were famous, but now you’re in the slums. Why is that?” I imagine to myself.
The ephemeral moment is approaching. I see you turning slowly towards me; eye contact is imminent! You are now looking at me. “He-hey, I know you.” I stammer, my words getting choked on their journey out my mouth. You just turn your head back. There is a glint of recognition in your eyes, but no emotion in your face. “Hey, I know you!” I call out but you’re now facing away from me, walking away.
Maybe in shame or maybe you’re still too high and mighty to acknowledge me. Maybe after all it wasn’t your born-to-beauty-brains state of mind, but an innate disconnection and aloofness to relationships as well as your insecurities, natural like a fawn fighting for its life from a hunter.