Hannah Nicklin

I fall in love a lot. I travel by train every day. And I people watch. I don’t know whether or not everyone secretly looks at everyone else, or if it’s just me. But I like to look. I do like to watch people. And I don’t mean to, but I do, I do fall in love. It’s the way they close their eyes as the warmth of the sunlight filters through the carriage, or the battered, well loved book I see them secretly smell, or the fact that they keep their laptop in a battered old leather satchel. Last week I fell in love with someone because he had ridiculous shorts on. There was this guy, who did a silent punch in the air when he finished his Sudoku puzzle. And this other one, who just stared, stared into the dark, when all you could really see was the dirt on the dusty windows. I loved him because he didn’t need the time and place where we were to be clear for him to see what he was thinking. I don’t drive. I own a bicycle, but they’re not really up to the long distances are they? So I travel a lot by train. And fall in love daily. I imagine a hundred different futures. And hundred different whispered vows. I don’t think it’s weird. I can’t be the only one. I told a friend once. She laughed a bit but I think she thought I was weird. She asked me why I didn’t talk to any of them, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to say. “Well, I mean they never talk to me do they? And they’d probably think I was weird, wouldn’t they?” The truth was, it had never occurred to me.