White means go

6:50 PM -- I have written so many words for women like me, like what I am now, this very moment. Alone in a corner of a coffee shop, open book of poetry on her lap, open notebook on the table. The pen rests on the starkwhiteness of the page. She smokes bent cigarettes every five minutes or so. She drinks her coffee as she glances at the door, trying not to look as if she were truly alone -- that by looking at the doorway once in a while, she can pretend (and the world with her) that someone is coming to meet her.

Her cellphone, too, lies open. Both of them are waiting. And she takes a bite from her slice of lemon cake. The phone's screen remains dark.

Another woman is at another corner. But she smokes her cigarette with the ease of one who knows that someone will meet her. Soon she will be gone and I, a woman I have written about so many times, would light another cigarette and turn another page.

07:04 PM -- The reluctant lover. (But only in her mind, only when they are not together.)

07:10 PM -- The only woman in a cafe of lovers. She has one mug all to herself, The others have to share. One cup of coffee, one white porcelain rim, for two bleeding mouths of bleeding hearts.

07:21 PM -- She waited with the smallest of hopes that soon, someone would come to end the waiting. But the reluctant lover caroums now the asphalt streets, successfully passing off as a legitimate human being. Bohemia in the corporation. Hail the metaphors.

She has to wait longer.

The book she has been reading has turned out to be a chore and all too soon, the words blur until they are white. There is too much of her coffee, and the crystal grains of sugar have refused to melt. The lemon cake crumbles. Even her cigarette offends her, and she puts it out, only half-consumed.

With her, with waiting -- things pale and darken at the same time. Knowing these things are just distractions, something to pass the time that just seems to crawl slower and slower that it sometimes falls still: the coffee can't be finishes, the cigarette doesn't burn, the page goes on and on and on. The knowledge that all these is something she'd rather not be doing. Shouldn't be doing in the first place.

She must finish her coffee, and only crumbs should be left on her plate. The book, open on her lap, can be replaced. There are two other books in her bag: poetry speaking of a requited waiting.

(She thinks now: all this talk about unrequited love, when poetry should be made about unrequited patience: waiting for the phone to vibratem waiting for the crumbs to settle, waiting for the coffee mug to empty, waiting for the cigarette to turn into ash, waiting for the books to turn to the last page, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the clock to strike ten, waiting for someone to come through the door with the spaciest of smiles just for her. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

It's 7:38 PM.)

8:28 PM -- The un-reluctant lover tells her that he is near. Now, Neruda glows again:

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and staring, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
(Sonnet XI)

and

Before I loved you, Love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among objects:
nothing mattered or had a name:
the world was made of air, which waited.
(Sonnet XXV)

How Pablo Neruda could have written a hundred sonnets for one Matilde Urrutia.

8:42 PM -- She should be disgusted with how much everything makes sense now. Even waiting in a parked car, while errands are run, would make her smile. The rain is opaque against the windshield and yet it leaves shadows on her jeans.

Oh, that smile.

And she thinks: Everything should be a familiar novelty, a novel familiarity. Even waiting for him to come back with a bag or two of bigas, while a Japanese love song drifts from the radio.

10:08 PM -- For the colorblind, white means go.