There’s a mystery to the unknown, the unsaid, the uncharted, the unexplored. I still replay moments from the day I saw her: the lady in a pink dress. Her smile had the kind of warmth that could melt Antarctica in seconds. She walked past me and smelled like a garden of daisies and fresh roses. Her brown eyes enchanted me, and for 60 seconds, I felt like a broken record struggling to play.

I never said a word to her. But perhaps that’s what makes a stranger beautiful. The unspoken words. The imagined stories. The way the mind fills in the blanks with poetry. I’m sure that if she had spoken, her voice would leave people spellbound. But I didn’t get to hear it. I stood there in my slightly rumpled NYSC khaki, admiring from a distance.

There’s something deeply alluring about the unknown. Have you ever finally spoken to someone you’ve admired from afar, only to realize the picture you painted in your mind was false? Sometimes, reality interrupts magic. And sometimes, the version that lives in our imagination is far more beautiful than the truth.

We romanticize strangers not because we know them but because we don’t. They become a canvas for our hopes, stories, and longing. We project onto them everything we wish love could be effortless, quiet, perfect. They are untarnished by disappointment, untouched by reality.

Sometimes, things are better left untouched, preserved in the quiet perfection of imagination.

That’s the beauty of a stranger:

They exist long enough to remind us that magic can still happen — even in silence.

Unspoken. Unforgotten.