Wake me up when September ends
Says a song
In what was left of the month, I spent it living on my feet, at the end of myself, waiting for the tremor or the accident to happen.
Waiting barefoot for the broken glass (autumn-colored beer bottles) camouflaged among the leaves.
Waiting for something: the scream, the news, the shot, the slam, the sword.
In these days, I have been attacked by a virus. The virus of waiting.
We all suffer from it.
It is the virus of those who look through windows on Sundays, of those who walk through solitary hallways, the virus of those who always miss the bus, of those who search for things (and answers) in the ceiling of empty rooms, of those who carry nothing in their supermarket baskets, the virus of empty airports, the virus of the fatigue of hope, the virus of phone booths and unanswered numbers, the silent virus of those who smoke, of firefighters who fall asleep watching the sun’s fire, the virus of early mornings and closed bars, the virus that attacks the organs that count hours, days, years, and wear out, the virus of those who stand in line, of those who buy planners but never write in them, the maybe later virus, the virus that doesn’t sleep and leaves scars on the calendar.
This virus also attacks things, the empty wine bottles lying on the floor. Broken and bleeding, waiting for the accident or the thousand pieces, it attacks the things on a bedside table that we don’t know what they are, and they stay there for years, the medications that save us at the point of expiration, the blades’ edges, the dust on our carpets, the flickering light bulbs on our darkest days.
This virus doesn’t kill us.
But it never dies either. It’s always there, the virus of waiting, waiting to get inside us.
A few days ago, I was waiting for my taxi, sitting outside the building. I watched the sky turn from light blue to gray, and then it darkened. I put on my headphones to listen to music, and the right one had no battery. I spent a while listening to music with only one ear, with both headphones on; it wasn’t bad but not the best either. But when a song I really liked came on, I wanted it to flood my ears, hit my head, and flow down my body until the melody wrapped me completely. But it wasn’t possible, not even with the volume at maximum. I thought that some relationships are like an iPhone and headphones where only one works. There’s music, everything is very hi-fi, and it’s about turning the volume up to the max in everyday things, but nothing ever really invades, envelops, or moves us, but now I take out the case of the headphones and recharge both, this time I listen to everything clearly and attentively, it’s how my life feels now, being with you is how it should have always been, having that magma inside me, from the very center of the earth, motivating me every morning to wait for you.
The calendar tells me September has ended.
The calendar is my past reduced to fragments, broken down into years, months, weeks, days, and then the clocks and their hours, minutes, and seconds, all this to make it easier to digest the passage of time and everything we’ve left behind, everything we didn’t achieve, so we don’t feel like life is slipping away all at once, but in little pieces.
What we did achieve tends to be set aside, time doesn’t touch it, it’s there, whole, a complete memory object: a photo, a song, a place, a color… and everything comes together, years gathered in a song, thousands of faces appear in one place, a color takes you to a place, and so the whole circle.
What we didn’t, what we didn’t have, give, see, do, love, is what the calendar reminds us of every day.
The calendar has more pages ahead, and that’s the future. But I don’t really believe the future exists because right now I am the future of myself a few minutes ago when I started writing this text. Each word is a way into the future that passes in front of us like the white lines on our road. Each word is a step left behind, and there’s no future like a station. If I look ahead as if looking at the future, I’ll probably meet your gaze looking at your future in the opposite direction, and perhaps from that moment our gazes will align on the same horizon.
Sometimes I think about the future, because I want to know where this waiting will take me.
This waiting room without hope
(says another song)
I have some reasons
my love
for not wanting to believe
in hope
because hope
disguises everything
it makes us believe
that the birds
in the mornings
pecking at our windows
are our dead
whom we love so much
and miss
hope
makes us believe
in the barking of dogs
as messages
sent to us
by someone
from far away
hope
invented
the story
of the two sides of the moon
and the lovers
watching it
at the same time
hope
says
that sadness doesn’t exist
only
transitional states
that everything passes
that’s what hope tells us
the one of soulmates
to keep moving forward
the one of the wind
that carries my words
to your ears
hope
invented
the notion of love
and language
in silences
and gazes
because hope
knows many stories
hope
that
repeats phrases
to us all
the same
after the storm
no evil lasts 100 years
time heals all wounds
it lies to us
promises us spring
in winters that kill us
but no one has taken away
our sadnesses
our winters
our storms
nor the 100 years of evils
and the wounds that bled
my love
it hurts to know
that sometimes hope
doesn’t exist
it’s just an illusion
just birds in the cold
nothing more than two souls
equally lonely
(and not twin)
stray dogs
that bark
people looking at each other
silences
there’s no message anymore
nor between the lines
while
lovers
who no longer love
just look at the moon
waiting
for anything
hope
can gift you
an open Pandora’s box
take you to a waiting room
and tell you
that it’s the last thing to lose
only to
abandon you
and you realize
that in the box
there
is
nothing
And I
from now on
won’t
believe in
hope
because I’ll only
believe
in you.
I love you. I’m always going to love you.