Tempus Fugit
I kept waiting for you the whole afternoon, very late at night, even until the next day, and I kept waiting the following days, smelling the air and spying on the corners in case you show up, but nothing. It’s ok. I don’t care anymore. I’ll just stay here, reading a book, eating an ice cream or some those funny things I like to do when I wait. Making up stories inside my head, I love that a lot too, and talking quietly, picturing that you have come and I reproach you for such delay, such indifference and lack of common sense.
It’s not that bad here, anyway. As the time goes by you get used and learn how to put up with the hours, days, even months and years. At first I stayed sitting here, bored of watching all these people going and coming, of searching for you among the fleeting crowd, while I swung rhythmically my legs dangling from the bench, until I became sleepy and started to nod off, yawning shamelessly. Now and then someone drawed near to ask me if I was lost or if I needed something, but after a while they stopped noticing my presence, or maybe they just got used to it and didn’t care anymore.
Now, I’m telling you, if you ever show up after all this time, I can’t guarantee any welcoming word, not even a grimace of acknowledgement or a hint of enthusiasm. In order to kill the minutes and this exhausting feeling of waiting, I quitted focusing in your possible figure looming into the distance, or coming out suddenly from behind a tree or some nearby building, and I have devoted myself to arrange my own space, my own agenda, my interests. There are so much to do when you use your time productively; thinking up a schedule, planning activities, talk to people who once in a while sit around here to comment stuff, about how life goes, about if it’s going to rain or be hot, about how everything is so expensive and hard. So much so, I even start to forget why I’m staying here and what I’m supposed to wait for, or whom.
I have a vague notion of something unfinished, something that I wanted or needed, before. In the busy hustle of this corner where I move around, where I spend my time, listening to the babbling of the city going on before my eyes, some days I manage to grasp that something, remembering clearly what I’m waiting for. It’s you. But you haven’t come, and it’s already late, it’s cold and one must bundle up. I’d like to go back, then I’d drink a good cup of hot cocoa, while I reproach you for your disregard. But I hardly can see the way back home, and my legs don’t work anymore for staying sitting here, they became stunted like the rest of my body. If you saw me now, you wouldn’t recognize me. Who are you?, you would ask me, and I wouldn’t know what to say.
When someone approaches to ask me if I feel well, if I need help, I try to look at that face through the blurred glass of my eyes, but I’m unable to make it out. I open my mouth to answer, but it hardly releases a sound. I cry because I forgot where I am and how to find my way back. The blurred voice tells me to be calm, to take her hand with my trembling hand -cracked by wrinkles of time-, that everything will be fine and I’ll be home soon.
