The Unrequited Sidewalk

Please forgive my writer's block. I seem to have come to the end of part 1 of my life without any idea of what happens in part 2.

While I wait in this interval for some sign to appear, let us take inventory. What do I have left to carry me from one phase to the next? A few crumpled leaves, a cracked sidewalk, a lot of feelings. Not much, and only one truly belongs to me.

Sometimes you turn the page yourself, and other times you must wait for another hand to turn it for you. Sometimes you become acutely aware that you aren't writing this part of your story. 

This is one of those times, so for now there's nothing to do but wait for my chance to take back the pen.

(The title sounds like it should be an Edward Gorey book, and frankly, it would be better that way.)

Waiting Around For Grace

Saturday, nothing but the echo of blowing leaves. Wind caught in corners. Feathers float without a sound.

If there is anyone here, they give no sign.

Sometimes I wonder if it's my fate to know people by their absence, a procession of empty spaces.  An impression at most, maybe; a fading handprint in the summer heat.

It's not that I mind being lonely so much, though it would have been be nice to share the emptiness once in a while. It's not being lonely, it's the difference between words and meaning, being looked at and being seen. 

I suppose that's what I'm doing here, walking this threshold as I do. Trying to see and hoping that someone will see me. The grace that comes with something more than indifference. I know by now this is unlikely, that I might as well sit on this bench waiting for a dead friend or a phantom lover to appear, but the heart is persistent, down to its last agonized beat. Maybe even longer.

If I know myself at all, in a hundred years, I'll still be making the same plea. I was not just a thing, an image, an obstacle that blocked the light. I had a meaning. A soul. By then, I will be truly invisible, merged with the wind. Still pleading. Still waiting.