IN A WINTER'S SUN

Who are you waiting for – you should be waiting for someone? Are you waiting for me? I think I’ve been waiting for you. You’re sending a message – is it to tell a friend about me, or are you concerned that you’ve been stood up? No, you’re not sending a message, not at that speed. Must have been someone for you. It wasn’t me. Was it someone apologising? What for? If it were, could I comfort you? It would no doubt scare you, as the reality of approaching a stranger petrifies me. You look so in need of company. Sitting to the left of the bench rather than in the middle as a solitary sitter might do. Even if you are not waiting for someone, the fact that you’re positioned as if to invite company suggests an openness of heart and a desire for the company of others. Of course, there could have been someone else sitting there, who has now left, but you are too self-conscious to shift along the seat for fear of ... for fear of something. I could help allay that fear except my presence would arouse a similar sensation.

As a distraction to yourself and to others, your phone is out again. You look over your shoulder. Nervously? Curiously? So easy to misread. Not that it matters; social convention prevents any ice being broken without a pretext. Our need for human contact denied by rules of our own making. I hear your heart beating. Steady, but kicking harder on the second beat as people approach. You’re definitely aware of it and this does nothing to ease your discomfort. We could silence that together if we were allowed into each other, or at least dampen our awareness of it as our proximity heightened the kicks in both of our hearts. It seems so easy, sitting here. All so possible, and it is. You’re a smoker too. So am I. Is that cigarette like the one I’m about to have in sympathy: one to chill a brain that has spent too long on one thought? Or just another distraction as a phone can only provide so much relief? You’re not making it any easier not to like you, and to hate me for obeying rules that don’t exist. I could love you as a friend, as I love you as a stranger. We could make this bench our world. As it is, I am likely to remain a stranger to you. I have felt love today, no matter how fleeting or how unacknowledged. I only had to see you, my friend. You were not hiding. You were waiting for me as I was for you. You only had to look, acknowledge me, but you are lost in your own world as life passes by. I love you for letting me into your world. If only I could tell you how easy it is, but I myself am caught up in my own world and am really no better than you.