There’s still a man, there’s still a woman. Separated by a week, but destined to be together. The man and woman enjoyed time with friends at the Friendly spot bar on different fridays and would try to drink until they could say the words they had held in for so long, but they usually sat silent. At night the woman would stare up at the moon and wonder if she would ever find the one she is meant to be with. The man would stare at the moon and ponder when he will find the right woman and end his loneliness. Until one day.

It was a Thursday, and the man woke up around the time he usually does to go to work, he ate his breakfast, put on his work clothes and set off. The woman woke up around the same time she does to get ready for the day, but she remembers the night before her co-worker asked her to take the morning shift at work. Being annoyed by this, she sluggishly put on her clothes, ate her breakfast and headed out early to see if she could catch the bus. The man’s apartment building was the first building on Mango Street, right in front of the bus station and right across the street from the community park with a beautiful lake. The woman’s apartment building was the third building on Mango Street, being a little further from the bus station and park, but it was still convenient. The man decided to leave early that day so he wouldn’t be late for his bus like he was the day before, his boss got pissed and he didn’t want to go through that again. 

As he left through the front door of the building, the wind blew his briefcase out of his hand onto the sidewalk. He then went over to pick it up. But as he went, he saw the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen in his life. Black hair, brown eyes and beautiful olive skin. They met eyes and the woman smiled at the man. The man wanted to talk to her but she was getting on the bus. The man then figured that he would just try to talk to her tomorrow. 

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After the woman made it to the Bus Stop, she heard a loud thud on the sidewalk. As she looked over, she saw a man reaching down for his briefcase. The woman met eyes with the man and smiled at him because she thought he was pretty cute. The woman would have talked to the man but she had to go to work. She figured she would see him again some day.

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From that day, the man would wake up earlier than usual just to wait for that woman to show up so he could talk to her before she got on her bus, but she never turned up. The woman however returned to her later shifts and pondered what would have been happening now if she had talked to that man she saw on the sidewalk that day. Both continued to work, then go home, and drink with their friends on opposite Fridays. They were still lonely.

One day about a month later, one of the man’s friends were talking about what happened the Friday before. He had gone to the bar and met a group of girls similar to their group of guys. He talked about how he had gotten together with one of the girls and was going to invite her group to hang out with their group of guys. The man was curious to see if the girl he had met at the bus stop was a part of that group, so he was pretty excited to meet them.

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The woman was thinking about last Friday. It was normal with all the girls in her group spreading gossip about co-workers and talking about guys, until a man showed up at the table. He was sweet talking the woman who was practically the leader of the group and they eventually started being together. After that, the guy invited the entire group to hang out with his group of friends. The woman thought it sounded fun but couldn’t make it because she had already planned something for that Friday. 

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The man showed up that friday with high hopes of seeing the woman he had been dying to meet, but she wasn’t there. He still had fun but felt sad that he may never meet this woman. One of the girls there that night saw how sad the man looked and decided to ask him if she could set him up with one of her friends on a blind date. The man reluctantly agreed and the date was set. Later on, the woman got a message from her friend saying that she set her up to go on a blind date with this man she met at the friend group meet up. Being the good friend the woman is, she agreed but was kind of annoyed due to the fact that her friends always try to set her up with the worst guys, at least in her opinion.

The night of the blind date came. The man was thinking of that beautiful woman he saw at the Bus Stop. The woman was thinking about the man she saw on the sidewalk that day. The man looked up at the moon and asked his heart what he should do. The woman looked up at the moon and asked her heart what she should do. A shooting star passed by the moon as they were staring, and they both wished at once, to meet who they are meant to be with.

The man told the girl from the night before he was calling off the date. The woman told her friend she was calling off the date. The man walked to a bench by the lake in the park near his apartment. The woman remembered a bench where she once got a beautiful view of the moon over the lake in the park, she decided to go there. As the man walked, he saw someone, a woman walking to the same place he was. The woman saw a figure, a man walking to the same place she was and she realized who it was. They met eyes and both said to each other, “Hi, it’s nice to meet you!”

I wrote this story the way I did for many reasons. Most of these reasons are based off of my experiences with many stories, mostly stories told through TV shows and or dramas. The other reasons were to give all who read, “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman,” by Sandra Cisneros closure to the story, but still makes the reader work for it. For example, this story’s structure is almost completely build off of the opening credit scenes to the show, “Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo,” by Tada Kaoru which is a show about a girl named Kotoko who is madly in love with the smartest boy in school and by the luck of a shooting star, ends up being with him in a happy relationship. In the opening credit scenes to this show, we see the guy and the girl constantly crossing paths at the same time, but never having the chance to meet each other, but in the end, finally meet and fall in love with each other. Though this is a far stretch from the shows intended story line, it is still a great story in its own light, so I decided to give it the exposure it deserves by making it the premise of my resolution to Sandra Cisneros’s story. As we can see in the story I wrote, it follows a similar structure. The guy and girl constantly cross paths but can never meet although they both share an undiscovered love for eachother, but at the end, by fate or just pure luck, the man and woman meet and it is presumed that they fall for each other in the end, and just for extra closure, they do. Another thing that I did in this story was add that both the man and woman live on mango street which is a reference to another one of Cisneros’s stories. All in all, this story was just a tribute to one of my favorite shows.

Works Cited:

Cisneros, Sandra, “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman,” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Vintage, 1991, pp.133-134

Fuji TV, 2013, https://youtu.be/HfACFMswVBE.