missing bond
written by amelia rodriguez / a.k.a amy
published june 20, 2026
I greeted the barista with a warm smile that hid desperation. It was in the afternoon of a brisk autumn day, I was home alone, and I was repeating a routine that I did every week, while I lived in the city of Columbus, Ohio.
I had rode the downtown-bound 102 bus with an optimistic mind that yearned for connection. I lived in Columbus for just over one year, and in that time, I had made no friends. My routine was as cyclical as it gets: wake up at 7:00, take the bus to work, try to not collapse from stress and anxiety and boredom, and then take the bus home, leaving barely three hours – sometimes four if I was lucky – of free time at home, before I had to go to sleep. It was no small miracle that I was able to hold myself together for most of these days. This is the ruthlessness, the reality, of the capitalistic society we live in. I wanted to fight that. I wanted to beat that. In even the smallest way. I wanted people, and I wanted connection. I wanted friendship. What was I alone, if not a crumbling pile of tears that formed together to resemble the shape of a person?
I ordered my usual – a Dante's Paradise. Espresso, with a shot of Frangelico, and I began my routine inside the cafe. Peoplewatching, and the eavesdropping that often accompanies it, is my lifeline when I have little else to draw life from. When I am anxious, lonelier than ever, and overtaken by the incapability of reaching out and begging and crying for help, the next best thing I can do is to observe the friendship of others happening right in front of me.
When I picked up my drink, I walked to the other room of the cafe. Bookshelves lined the walls, and upon the small stage was a group of musicians setting up the speakers for their show later that night. I had left a book on one of the shelves from a previous visit, and went to grab it.
The other room of this cafe was a precious space to me. I came to realize that this room is where other queer people my age would congregate. Students from the nearby Ohio State University, coming together to study, talk, gossip, organize, laugh, hug, and cry.
I sat down on my usual spot, in front of the windows that graced my back with the sun's late afternoon glow. The glow greeted my back with the usual, as did the sip of ill-advised alcohol that entered my mouth at the table. I shyly cracked open my book, without any intention of giving the words of the pages real focus. Then, in the corner of my eye, my focus, if there was any, became transfixed on something, someone, else.
A girl my age, trans flag pins proudly placed on her OSU laptop bag, set her things on the table to my left. She put a pair of cat-ear headphones over her head, and sat down, pulling open a Canvas tab on her laptop which was tilted juuuuuuuust enough so that I could glance its detail from the corner of my eye as I did my best to pretend to read a book.
My mind raced. I was desperate. I was alone. I wanted friends. I wanted to meet the people in the community I resided in for over a year without having taken a part in it at all, a transplant in every sense of the word. I wanted to talk to this girl. I wanted to say hello. I wanted to have a fun conversation with her. I wanted to compliment her bag. I wanted to compliment the video game stickers she had on her laptop. I wanted to compliment the confidence of the smile that graced her face without fail even as she did something as mundane as read the passages of the story she was studying for school.
i wanted to say hi.
And then someone walked up to her and said hi. From the main room of the cafe, someone approached the girl's table. The girl took off her headphones and greeted her friend with a wide smile, and waving her right hand comically fast. The girl got up and hugged her friend, then sat back down as the friend remained standing. The friend was just stopping by but figured the girl would be here, so they wanted to say hello. The two of them excitedly talked for a moment about meeting back up at the Ohio Union later. The friend walked away, and the girl went back to reading on her laptop, but without putting her headphones back on.
My mind raced. She had left her headphones off. Her persistent smile didn't waver after her friend left. The seat opposite to her was empty. She begun to focus less on her schoolwork and glance at her phone every few minutes. I knew that there was no better time to meekly say hello to the most approachable and friendly person in my vicinity. I knew that there was no better opportunity to immediately make it clear that I wasn't being weird I swear to god I wasn't being weird I swear to fucking god that I was only taking note of every little thing I noticed about you in that moment because I wanted to be able to talk to you and have a conversation and maybe make the first new friend I had ever made in-person since high school and I know you noticed me staring at you I know I caught your eye looking back at mine for approximately one ten septillionths of a second but i saw it nonetheless and i probably wasn't actually being very subtle about it but you didn't seem to mind so i just kept doing it and then i knew all i had to do was say hi and say that i'm new in town and wanted to get to know people.
So, naturally – logically, even – I got up,
put my book back on the shelf,
turned around,
and rushed to the bathroom
where i sobbed quietly.
then
i cleaned myself up
and rode the bus back home.