Lonely Girl Waiting

Waiting. It is all I ever do anymore. Everything inside of me is at a stand still, wanting for something no longer in my reach. Life has left me far behind and now I am so lost, I can’t find my way by myself. My parents always told me to stand still when I am lost, back when I was a much braver, more courageous young girl full of the beauty that is innocence. Someone will come find me and return me to where I belong. So here I stand. Very still. Wondering if anyone even realizes I am gone at all?

Everything around me keeps swirling on past. Like the plastic shopping bag dancing in and out of lanes of the highway, floating high above each hood and tumbling below the undercarriages of these cars whizzing by furiously. If I dare move a muscle, I am afraid I will be mowed down, splattered, as if I was my favorite childhood game, Frogger, come to life for but a purposeful moment as this. So I wait. Watching as they bustle on without a care given to the girl standing here all alone in the misty morning fog, thickening the air until it makes it hard to breathe. Do they even see me?

It was so hard to keep pace with them. I didn’t mean to drop so far back from the herd. The stampede was deafening and my head was going to explode with agony at any second. I had to close my eyes as they were beginning to bulge from my head like an overripe banana fisted by a two year-old. The fluorescent lights buzzed as they shone blindly into my pupils like the flashlight of a nervously armed security guard. The skin on my neck began to get icy and the hair on my arms began to raise with the goosebumps as lightning bolts of electricity struck my heart. Blood was rushing to every far off crevice in my body, a bursting dam crashing through the floodgates, stirring up the murky waters of my soul. Consumed by the fiery energy in the air, I crumpled to a heap on the dirt, screaming silently for my words have been swallowed whole. How did they not notice?

With the weight of my sins sitting heavily on me, I mustered the strength to stand time and time again. But each time it got harder. My shoes were filling with cement, my clothes were dripping wet, and the ground was just the same as quicksand. I kept stumbling and tripping. Collapsing under the pressure. I reached out my hand, over and over and over, but no one ever grabbed it. It fell with me each and every time, flopping like a pancake dropped on the floor. Desperate to follow in his footsteps, I sacrificed myself. Every time my knees hit the ground, I took out a piece of myself to leave behind, so that my load would get lighter. So I could manage to stand on my own and continue struggling along in their shadows. Dragging my weary body behind them unnoticed; the distance between us growing quickly as the midday sun gigantisized their shadows. My trembling legs give out once more and they were gone out of sight before I even raised my head off the ground. Why would anyone stop to bother with someone like me?

So now I sit here. And I wait. I hold tight. It doesn’t surprise me that they left me behind. He just kept on, racing against the clock to reach the final destination. Unaware… or, just, maybe, fully aware- and grateful for the lessened burden. No amount of ostentatiousness from me would catch his eye. Would signal his heart to open wide and let me in. Would captivate his soul and turn his attention away from the road before him. Though he would be too fascinated by his following still to take heed of my anguished distress over the love I was promised with my head held between his brutal hands. Yet, here I wait. When they couldn’t even wait for me, as the tide waits for the moon to rise across the night sky. Like a cicada waits for mother nature to signal the time has come to rise from its resting place deep within the earth. Patiently, dotingly, assuredly, I wait for my rescue. Will it ever come?

For as long as it takes. Until the world stops turning. Through the changing seasons and hands of time. Here I will stay. I will remain. Watching as life continues passing me by at the speed of light. Wanting him to need me. Needing them to remember me. Remembering them as they have forgotten me. Forgetting who I am as I sit tight and wait. They say good things come to those who wait, after all, and he is the greatest love I have ever known. So here I am. – a lonely girl life left behind in the hustle and bustle, waiting for the love he promised to come and save me. Will the day ever come?