when waiting was sweet

when waiting was sweet

 

i  remember when waiting was sweet;

when it was about the passing of time

ribboned with excitement, gilded with promise.

 

when Christmas came alive window by window, the nights

pulled in tight, like a hushed, velvet scarf.

 

or the bluebells, sleepy heads pushing into the spring showers,

colour spreading, as hope infectious.

 

the long, hot summer,

six weeks of yellowed calendar, until we all returned anew,

trimmed, polished conkers, pigeon toed in shoes that pinched,

shirts that would hold us until June,

the reunion of September so grand and glorious.

 

an oven, sweating like an elderly relative, hissing smells into the air from a hastily opened door, stomachs lined up like a choir in rehearsal.

 

adulthood, always out of reach, hidden like Shangri-la

between the arduous mountains of adolescence,

but the potential always there, kept alive

in myth and mystery

and the comfort of naïve guesswork.  

 

this was when waiting,

was sweet.

 

now, waiting stings with innovative ways of torture;

miniature sea green screens illuminating the dead of night,

sometimes.

inboxes filled with tight, heavy tumbleweed

in the space where expectation squats unseen,

messages bolted together from flat sentiment,

words oozing from fingers without thought.

this is what the waiting has become now. clinging, with drained fingertips

to a warhorse laptop, as the day browns into dusk,

night stampeding the senses.

 

each of us, in sallow rented rooms,

drooped drunk over ashen screens,

 

waiting…

waiting…

 

always waiting,

for something better.

something more.