The Weight of Waiting - A Rumination

The Weight of Waiting

I sit and wait, for you.

You do not know what it means to wait the way that I have waited.

Sure, I’ve been late to dinner or cancelled an evening plan of ours.

I've gotten stuck trying to get the curls in my hair perfect for our night out,

10 minutes too late, tendrils bouncing with anticipation as you check your watch.

But I have never made you wait the way I wait.

The waiting I speak of is paralyzingly heavy, years of female souls before and after me all pulling down the same life raft, our fingernails did into the circular life force with a collective desperation so powerful the ocean gives us some room to breathe as the waves encircle us.

We sit together in a sticky purgatory holding one another's hands, holding back tears, and clinging to positive thoughts of what is in store for us.

While you enjoy your morning drip and read the news of what's going on in other men's worlds, you know nothing of the most beautiful, graceful waiting going on beside you, around you, in your bathroom and in your kitchen.

You are so adorably and stunningly clueless about everything.

How simple and quaint are your concerns.

How infantile are your wishes and desires.

The weight that I wait with feels like the heaviest heat

emanating from the bus you were supposed to be on.

And yet, paradoxically, your weight is light like air, like a whim that never was,

As your decisions are made without purpose or calculated thought,

You float through the sea of people you know like a king on his chariot,

Because your rule is every waiting woman.