moments away

Yesterday i was walking April, a friend's dog. A woman walking toward us slowed, and with a smile said the dog was adorable. I stopped, and told her about April.
Time suddenly accordioned, as i searched for a way to extend a brief, common social moment. I wanted to live in her smile. After a minute of eternity, we continued on our ways. I looked back twice, then turned a corner.
I didn't ask her name, though that was one of the things that almost jumped off my tongue. I almost responded to her final "she's adorable", with "So are you." Later, i imagined putting my hand on hers, and guiding it over April's coat. April doesn't like having her head touched, so the pretext would have almost had merit.
Moments like these come, and disappear. Often, in the aftermath all we can do is say "Why didn't i say something??" Different things stay our tongue. Mostly insecurity. It's possible that the forwardness she showed was a huge thing for her, she may have been tongue-tied with nerves. It's also possible she simply thought April was cute, and had no trouble saying so. Now, April is cute...but perhaps not high enough on the adorable scale to merit such fuss. So i'll go so far as to propose a 56% probability that the object of this woman's attention was me.
I let the moment slip away partly for feminist reasons...in a world where demeaning objectification of women is common, i will perhaps always have trouble manifesting any behavior that smacks of "masher".
Maybe i also let her go because she was a black woman who straightened her hair, and my feelings about what that says about self-worth...that we live in a world where black women seem to have learned exactly none of the lessons Malcolm X taught...how he spent years burning his head with lye, in an effort to be less "black"...my feelings on this issue are so strong that it's almost hard to imagine getting involved with a woman who straightens.
Maybe i also let the moment go because i didn't want to risk rejection, when my battered spirit was suddenly happy. I wanted to look into her eyes forever...she didn't seem damaged, just sincere and gentle and beautifully alive.
A strange thing about moments like these...while they're happening, you're in such a world of possibility that it's almost like being drugged. You know you could lose the moment, but your euphoria makes you feel that moments like these must grow on trees.
The next day, week, or month, you feel all too keenly how that's not so.
It's also hard pegging me in regard to these matters. Though i am in so many ways the polar opposite of a "player", i've also been envied for my fearlessness in approaching women.
In most of my recent romances, there hasn't been that instant rush. I've been trying to be more "evolved", having learned that infatuation actually can grow, when there was none at first. But it starts to feel like i've been pushing this openness too far. What i felt yesterday...more often than not it seems to not grow, if it's not there at first.
I think i've also dabbled in infatuationless romance because it's easy to imagine a woman who's right for me, but finding her is a solitary path. Maybe that's why i let the moment go, too...if no woman is likely to work out, it's easier to lose someone you weren't crazy about in the first place, right?
Mind you, my spirit has long been a stranger to such dark places...yet this is where the wounded bleed...
And after a thousand nights of loneliness, having anyone feels like it must be better than having no one.
Sometimes it is, maybe.
Still...
We let these moments slip away, promising ourselves to never let it happen again.
Until that next moment comes...
And flies away...