Alone on Valentine day

Alone on Valentine day:
Reflections upon an Open Window


I am alone, the lights in the room are off. I watch a man standing outside my window. The only glimmer of light on my face comes from the moonlight outside. It is very cold outside and my window is open. My body feels cold as the cold air seeps into the room. My body feels warm as the trapped heat rushes out past me into the freedom of the cool night. I am in light and shadow, in cold and heat, and there is a man standing outside my window.
He cannot see me. He is too far away, I am too concealed. I watch in complete secrecy as he waits. He is waiting for something, standing still in the middle of the brick walkway. He is expecting something, someone. He is alone in the cold, with a thin green jacket, a hood pulled over his head, waiting, waiting so eagerly.

A woman now walks down the path towards him. She is determined, confident. My heart leaps for him. Is she who the man was waiting for? She draws nearer and nearer. There is a moment, an incredible instant when she is closest to the man. I imagine her smiling, waving and shoutinga warm hello in spanish  "mso-spacerun: yes" But that moment is past now, she does not stop and continues to walk. No, she is not the one. The man betrays nothing to me. He had known she was not the one, but he did not show it to me by looking away. He did not search her face with hope, only to let his face drop with despair when he saw her. Instead he simply watched her, watched her with no emotion.

Another woman approaches. She is holding a child, busy in her own world of motherhood. Is she the wife of this husband? Will she come to save him from this icy hell and bring him back to the warm living room of a home? No. She walks past him as well, not looking at him. But the child does not show such tact and eyes the lonely man steadily.

Who is he waiting for? Is she late? Why am I so quick to assume it is a she? The man now turns to watch the cars cruising past in the distance. When he turns his face towards the moonlight, I can see his breath in the icy air. He has moved some distance down the path. Not exactly idly pacing back and forth, but not going in any one direction, he walks with a precise gait. It is slow, but each step is taken with complete control, complete deliberation. Yet with all that intent he goes nowhere. He is tied to that spot. The shackles of hope never let him wander far from the place where he expects the other to show up. Like a tethered goat grazing the grass, he moves from spot to spot, but always within the boundaries.

My heart goes out to him. How sad is this man, neglected and abused, ridiculed and ashamed! No longer do I hold hope when new people walk towards him. I know they will walk past him in silence, perhaps questioning his presence, perhaps pitying him with knowing compassion. How sad he is. How pathetic he is! I can hardly stand watching him any more. I cannot imagine his loneliness. How humiliating to stand alone for all to see how you have been deserted. Why has he waited for so long? Is he that lonely and that pathetic? He has stood there in the freezing cold for over an hour. He has stood in faint moonlight with no one to talk to, no one to laugh with, and no one to hold.

I could never do that. I could never stand to be alone in the cold and humiliate myself like that. How much pain and anguish must stir inside him while he waits for the one who never comes! It is a kind of quiet rage that creeps along tense arms, clenching the hands into tight firsts. But wait! To my complete horror I look around me in recognition. I realize how much I was absorbed by the image of the man outside the window. The haunting image has arrested me in front of that open window for over an hour. I am freezing, all the warmth has long since escaped the room, but I lack the green jacket he wears. The lights are still off and I am in darkness, but the moonlight that illuminates his body only barely kisses my face. I am also standing alone. Standing with no one like that pathetic man, even more pathetic because I have no one to expect.

Wish you are not lonely anymore.

^__^
no lonely anymore now
^__^
i got all my friends to back my back
^__^