The pores are open on my hands. Some hair grew there some time ago, but mostly age. Cracked skin marks my years the way the rings on the tree stump I rest on do. We were both cut down around the same time. Now, people just use us as a reference—a timeline for their own existence.
The grandchildren don’t visit. Even my own children don’t. I live too far in “the middle of butt-fucking Egypt” as they so tactfully put it. Phone calls still exist, but not often. I mostly sit, waiting for time to wave as it passes on its fall to the water waiting for impact below the bridge.
Even Time wishes not to be around this long. It’s too much waiting. Sometimes there’s a war, and the piles of gutted, dry blood-painted bodies take on the occupation of keeping a count on things. Sometimes, a political race—to where, I still don’t know—keeps track of the money spent, the votes. Sometimes there’s a death in the family and the relatives measure how long they themselves have left. Most of the time, though, time is spent waiting for dinner to be cooked, waiting for school to be over, waiting for sleep to find us, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting for the end of something—anything. I’ve lived long enough to know at least that, but I haven’t lived long enough to understand what all the waiting is for. Death, I suppose, but that doesn’t seem too fair, does it?
The moments, which don’t feel as though I am waiting, are usually spent with someone other than myself or are those in which I am creating.
Upon realizing that it is a process, I was happy. Upon realizing that all the goals I had set for myself were really nothing real, I held back a tinge of regret at the time wasted working towards them, but finally, my joy gutted a laugh out of me, I laid on the frizzing carpet, and exhaled pointless worry. When I inflated my lungs, I thought about all the things I could work on. I thought about fixing my car. I considered sketching a mug shot of someone I had never met, probably never would meet, and didn’t care. I didn’t even care that no one other than myself, the occasional nosey girlfriend, and my best friend would ever see it. The dreams of fame faded along with the hopes to be published and noticed for what I had done. The fact that I had written, painted, drawn, sculpted, invented, or fixed whatever it was, was good enough for me.
