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.