I feel awful.
Back pressed against a bench, my legs lounge lazily on the brick ground, I stare ahead at the still river flowing before me.
Alone.
My headphones clamp tightly to my head, looping a dreary playlist, my mind only half paying attention to the melancholic lyrics.
Next to me lay my phone, deliberately flipped over.
Sitting at the gazebo diagonally across my bench, a couple pressed close to each other, both of their bodies stinging with sweat, their feet wrapped with tightly locked rollerblades. They exchange phones, whispering to one another about whatever interesting thing that was playing on their tiny screens, while I watch from afar with low-lidded eyes.
Behind me, another couple breezes by, cycling side by side, their loud music overpowering the ones from my headphones. Behind them flows the quick wind stirred up by their matching bikes, billowing in my face as I turn around to look for the source of the rock music blaring out their loud speakers.
I tended to frequent this bench at night, soaking up the natural atmosphere and inhaling the scent of Mother Nature, letting her run her windy fingers through my normally tousled hair. Often this bench is unoccupied, and I sit there with my heavy headphones.
Alone.
On a regular day, the spot next to me is filled by a friendly flowery visit from Mother Nature herself. She would decorate the spot next to me in her abstract art, adorning the backrest with petals or coating the seating area with leaves.
Today, however, the spot is clean. The petals and leaves have been blown off, leaving an odd emptiness behind. Part of me considers reaching out to it, but my hand remains limp and disobedient, fingers loose.
Something that does not exist shouldn’t be able to hurt, but the vacuum inside me is throbbing, desperately reaching out its invisible hands to grasp the empty spot next to me.
Its fingers close around nothing.
The song in my headphones ends, a maddening silence consuming me as my phone lags, struggling to decide on the next song.
As the silence prolongs, I close my eyes, allowing my mind to be dissolved into a dream.
Everything around me folds in on itself, melting into the bench and I. Not a single sound is to be heard except the soft, sweet lull of the next song that had finally begun playing in my headphones, drowning out the crickets’ harmonies and the chatter of passers-by.
When my eyes flutter open, I am no longer alone at the bench.
Next to me, he is seated.
He is taller than me, with short black hair and a black bomber jacket draped over his broad shoulders. His arm is resting on the backrest behind me. Long green pants cover his strong legs, which are stretched out like mine. Like me, he stares at the now stilled river before us.
My heart flutters a little as his head tilts slightly towards me, a dust of pink coating my cheeks.
Although I cannot hear him, I know exactly what he is saying, nodding quietly in response. Never have I shared a single anecdote of my life with him, yet it was as though we had exchanged a lifetime's worth of emotions and stories.
In the blink of an eye, I’m far from the bench, walking with him down the park’s footpath. He places himself between me and the bicycle path, alerting me everytime a cyclist is pedalling towards us. We are chatting about something beautiful, something so wonderful that my mind couldn’t even begin to decipher what we were discussing.
In another blink, I’m talking to his mother. She’s pulled me into a hug, speaking in either a foreign language or dialect to him. With tears on the brink of falling, she tells me how I make her son happy, and how I’ve somehow impacted him enough to patch things up with his father. I find myself ducking my head shyly, insisting it was never my doing, that I had no recollection of being that impactful.
Then suddenly, it’s the moment I first met him. The train had jerked to a halt, all his books spilling onto the ground. I, who had been standing between him and my cousin, bent down to help scoop some of the stationery that had rolled out of his pencil case, absent-mindedly handing it to him. I couldn’t even begin to imagine his face as I passed his items to him.
I couldn’t even begin to…imagine his face.
Oh.
I didn’t know how to imagine a face I hadn’t seen before. I couldn’t recall a memory that I never had. I wouldn’t be able to decipher a conversation that I knew nothing of.
The music comes grinding to a halt, an obnoxious advertisement blaring in my ears, reminding me of my lack of a premium subscription.
My eyes fly open, the roller skating couple comes back into my line of sight, the two of them preparing to continue skating. My eyelids begin to droop again, angling my vision towards the brick tiles below.
A child’s excited squeal snaps me back into my senses, the jarring sound causing me to realise how much my ears were hurting. Abruptly, I pried my headphones off my ears, an action large enough for the couple to swivel their eyes towards me. The man seems to shrug it off, but the woman studies my face, sympathising with whatever she assumed my plight was. I gritted my teeth, a cruel jab piercing me in the gut.
I watched them skate back into the night.
“What was she looking at?” I croak out, swearing a little under my breath.
Fingers trembling, I lifted them to my face. I touched the tip of my index and middle finger to my now hot and heavy eyelid, wincing. Gingerly, I lower the other fingertips, allowing them to rest upon my cool, glistening, face. Realisation sank in as I sniffed, my nose blocked and my throat hoarse.
I turn to fasten my eyes on the spot next to me again. It remained devoid of anything.
Slowly, I reach a hand out, hovering it next to the empty space. A mirthless laugh slipped from me as my fingers closed around a non-existent hand. Perhaps the wind pitied me, slipping its windy fingers into mine.
The sound of river water floats to my ears, its near-silent rhythm sounding like a song. I keep myself extra still, not wanting to break the serenity of the area a second time.
Looking to my side would be pointless anyways.
He’s not there.
I’m sitting by myself.
I still am.
Alone.
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