The Waiting Game

You've been playing the waiting
game for a very long time. You've lost
track of the hours, the days, the months
and the years that you've been alone,
on your own. Be it a small apartment,
or a rather large house. You see the
happy couples, you see the unhappy
couples, but you see two people
together doing their best to preserve
whatever it is that they refer to as 'love'
and you are so envious of that word
which they say to each other when
no one is listening.

You've developed a habit of occupying the
time you would have spent with another.
You've taken up hobbies,
You've started a career.
You've taken up jogging perhaps,
and weight training maybe, if age permits.

You've taken up painting landscapes on sunday,
or fixing old model trains- and then a song comes
on, and it stops you in your tracks.
You look around-
you and see how empty your house is, the tiny
amount of space taken up by the dog or the cat,
the one place at the table, and the song's sweetness
hits you in the gut, or in the chest, and you feel that
sweetness rise up to your throat as if it were making you sick
and you hasten to change the station, or get away from
the sound, or listen, and let it run its course, let
the sweetness sicken you, and bawl silently
spewing tears. You whine the way a stalled engine
tries to start, and then, you return to you're activities
or go off to work.

Perhaps you think of the lost
opportunities, perhaps you
try to call a friend and they're
busy, perhaps you wonder
how much time you've got
left to play the waiting game,
to play the wanting card, you
think, "lonely hearts are better
than broken ones" and then you
remember.

Perhaps it was
only once that you knew it, that
you knew the wait was over,
and suddenly, without warning,
you have the most beautiful
face, you have the most soulful
and seductive voice,
and you move light as air as if
everything around you
was set to the beating of your heart,
and you say 'a lonely heart
is better than a broken one,' and
a winner never quits
simply because they've been left
standing at the altar.

You remember a second, an
instant when the clouds parted
and you were allowed to walk
outside; and the sweet was
sweet and the bitter was bitter
and there was no in between,
and you return to your hobby,
or to your dog and you remember
that the loneliness will be forgotten
again, as it had been in the
past, and you remember the time
you spent waiting before, and
you think not of the loneliness,
but of the accomplishments made in
solitude. Even if they were modest,
or hard for other people to
believe. And you remember those
days when being alone meant
listening to the leaves fall from the
trees, seeing your reflection in
a pane of window-glass
in front of a department
store, and it pleased you
to see that figure of yourself, solitary
and free standing approach a
door where some one else was
waiting to let you come inside.