I was waiting, and waiting.
It was the speed of Hemingway lunching late, while the protagonist was waiting for a thing that no longer required waiting.
Tables go unwaited when the cafe is empty and the evening nears close, closing whenever the owner deems it time to close shop, to retire upstairs for the quiet evening cup of tea.
When you're young, you think, one day, I will be.
I will grow into this ideal, where happiness arises, and everyday is satisfied. There might be a career. There might be art-on-the-side. There will be friends, and a more-or-less permanent-partner. It's this hazy, fictive suburbia-soul, even in our cities. Apartments. Cats. Fish in a bowl, or in tanks. Coffee mugs, & espresso machines. Vitamins, with food, because taken alone, it will give you nausea & that nagging headache.
My last fish died, three years ago, this silver moon of a fish, with its lovely billows, & thread of pink & blue, and I wept, because I could not keep it alive, despite the PH-perfect tank, & the filter, & the food. I did right by the fish, and it died anyway, new, young, & beautiful.
Moo-moo died when I was seven, so I learned to read, prolifically. She was the only person who knew my tongue.
My parents were never around most days; my mother was away, dealing with a family crisis, & took my little brother with her. My father worked 'til late.
There was school, where dark-haired Asiatic children who looked a little like me, didn't speak my language, & nor did the others, the jewish kids or the italians or the spanish.
When my mother called, I'd make up stories about playtime. I didn't want her to know that it was loneliest part of my day, where all the other kids had their groups. I said so-and-so was my friend, and so-and-so & I played house, and so-and-so & I raced cars. I did not say that I fiddled idly with the unloved toy-space of the day, and that I thought that playtime would never end.
Moo-moo would pick me up after school, which was the best part of the day. And then we'd go on adventures. She'd wander the neighborhood with me, and when I was tired, we'd sit on a bench, and I'd eat my snack. And then we'd go home, and she'd peel her snap-peas & make dinner, and I'd watch, and she would read me stories from her newest comic-collection.