I’m looking at you, but since I’m not sitting directly in front of you, you still don’t realise it.

There’s something strange in you, and yet you’re alluring as no other woman around.

I’m staring at you trying to find out which, of the thousands of details your pretended perfection show to the outer world, is part of your natural self, and yet it’s not so easy to understand.

How come such a sophisticated woman is spending this hot summer afternoon alone in a crowded park?

Dark hair gathered in two pony-tails falling on your shoulders. Would be natural, if you were ten years old or if you were a bimbo-girl. But you’re past your twenties and, if the case was the latter, you’d colour your hair blonde.

Those breasts almost bursting out of a pink short-sleeved low-cut cotton shirt could be indeed a sign of a precedent plastic surgery; I can’t judge well from the distance. It seems strange you are wearing a long shirt, though, way below your knees. It’s somehow in stark contrast to the rest of you.

Then those sexy lips and a thin nose that could – or could not – be natural, and clean, drawn eyebrows that make me wonder how much time you spend on them every day.

But then I lay my sight on your big eye. How to describe them? They seem out from a Margaret Keane painting. Some say the eyes are the only part of your body that doesn’t get old: they look the same for your entire life. Maybe, that’s where your true-self lays, indeed?

I’m still staring at them when you turn to me and our eyes met. I look away, embarrassed, wondering why you turned to me.

I hope I didn’t annoy you. And yet I wonder: are you aware of what you are doing to me?

I started looking at you out of curiosity: you are not only beautiful, you are even eating a vanilla ice cream! That’s my favourite taste: we could be made for each other. We should probably marry. I’m going too fast, am I not?

The problem is not that you are eating that ice cream. The problem is how you are eating it.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I did. You lick and bite it eagerly, careless of the white cream that is messing up your lipstick.

Well, I’m sure you’ll just wear it again as soon as you finish. I don’t have a fresh change of underwear to wear, though, and I can tell that if you keep on licking that cone like that… I may soon need one.

You don’t look at me anymore. I guess that happened just by chance before, maybe you didn’t even realise I was staring at you. Soon I feel bold again, soon I’m staring at you again.

At your lips opening as you take the ice cream to your mouth, the tip of your tongue touching the cream first, your lips closing on it as you suck some in your mouth. Then again, and again. You look in front of you and adore that cone as if it was the only object of your desires.

And I look at you the same way. Only, now, I’m looking far below your lips. Was it because of the strong sun, was it because you never learnt how to eat ice-cream properly, the vanilla has dripped down the cone and you didn’t realise it until some of it fell just below the hollow of your neck, and slid down to your cleavage.

I see you began licking the cone on the sides, trying to save as much vanilla as you can. Then, when the cone has stopped dripping, you look furtively around, somehow forgetting to check in my direction, and slide your fingers on your cleavage to gather as much lost ice cream as you can.

I swear, I would lick you clean in two seconds. I’d not stop there though: I’m already imagining your naked tits, in need of my expert tongue. I’m imagining the sweetness of the vanilla mixed with the slightly sweaty taste of your skin, in this summer day.

My eyes are locked on your fingers. You lift them up, take them to your mouth, suck one, then another. Then, while that second finger is still in your mouth, you suddenly turn and look at me, again. Our eyes meet, and I decide I don’t want to play this game anymore: if I get harder, I’ll not be able to stand at all for a while.

I stand up and start walking towards you. You stand up too, you turn towards me, and I see us married, a

And then, just a couple of meters before I reach you, another man overcomes me. You open your arms to welcome him.

I stop. So, that’ it: you were waiting for a man, of course.

You kiss him, you hug him, and as you do you still look at me, just a few meters behind him.

I hope don’t look away, this time. I hold your stare, proudly, and I hope you know what I’m thinking.

I don’t know what those big eyes did to me, but if they are indeed the real you I’ll come back to this park tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after again, just so I could see them again.

And maybe, to eat an ice cream together.

A vanilla one, for sure.