Did you know I was waiting for you like a dog?
The ink on my right calf was still bleeding. Every tiny movement tore the wound open a little further, a small, stubborn violence beneath my skin. Despite that, I walked.
Saturday night was descending upon the city in all its glamorous indifference. The lights were coming alive. The music escaping through the crevices of slightly ajar doorways.
Everyone walked with purpose, knowing they had somewhere to be. And I walked among them. Insignificantly.
I had a hundred feet to cross. To get to the other side. My fish eyes searched the crowd anyway, scanning every face for the faintest possibility of you. A shoulder. A silhouette. A familiar turn of the head. A whiff of vanilla.
Anything.
I reached the centre and for a moment, I was divided. One half of me stood there, bleeding unnoticed. The other half travelled three hundred and two days backwards.
302? That can’t be right can it? Who’s been counting?
But there you were. Walking towards me. That heavy lavish bag digging into one shoulder. The green of your top pressed up against your skin by the wind.
I didn’t know it was you. Not yet. And then our eyes met. I saw you see me. I recognized the recognition. The nervous anticipation. That tiny glimmer of hope. The tremor in your breath.
The world stopped and for one impossible virgin moment the entire fucking universe made room. For you. For us. For… HOOOOOONK!!!!!!
A blaring horn slammed me back into reality. Apparently I wouldn’t even be granted an attosecond of reverie.
I fled before the universe could embarrass me further.
I saw them. The young ones. Budding love. Playing with the spark as though it could never burn them. Hearts skipping beats between stolen sideward glances. That beautiful, stupid certainty that tomorrow had already been promised.
I saw those two redwoods. Dressed in sweats that had become too old to throw away. Standing beside each other like they had been planted there. Roots disappearing deep into the chasms they had explored together.
I saw everything.
Everything except… you.
Why is it so quiet?
Wasn’t it yesterday? I was running down this same path, screaming because you had taken me out of the ordinary. You had made the world enormous. There was no one else then. No one. But still… it was so loud.
I turned the penultimate corner.
And slowed. Just a little.
Because perhaps the universe had been constructing a near miss all along.
Perhaps I was about to walk past you at precisely the wrong second.
Perhaps you were somewhere ahead, gathering yourself for your courageous appearance… and all I had to do was keep walking.
One step. Then another. Then another.
Each step closer to home… a mile further away from home.
And then I knew I had arrived.
I turned around. One last time.
Just in case.
There was no one there.
Of course there wasn’t.
I disappeared into the darkness.
I sat in the empty room and broke softly.
Hello?
Hello?
Do you know me?
They call me Mr Forgettable.
