She still has time

Gone were the days when she lived by herself, with hundreds of books and the rest of paraphernalia of another world, all jammed in 28 square meters. Uncharted, munificent territories to explore.

Now she enters the empty room through a smoke screen and looks at the leftovers she took: a smooth toothbrush, small debris of toothpaste between the bristles, a worn-out blue dress. She thinks:What a jest, what a jest, and here I am. Terribly alone. Terrified, yet unflappable, flustered. Hands folded, dry skin, eczema on her neck, tired and lugubrious dark eyes. She looks at her phone: it is bed time, sets an alarm. Nothing unusual, she could rest and think, think and rest.

In 7 hours, he’ll be here. She thinks: He’ll come. Open the door, open the fridge, open the window- so many things to turn on and open except me. I am a glacial figure, boreal as I am, magnetized by my solitude, I am pushing the limits of my absence. I forget what his voice sounds like. Honeyed when laying in my arms, appealing when saying my name. Disapproving when I weep. All these sparkles made him, once, to be a lover. Now he comes. Irreversibly.

She thinks that waiting will make things worse. She remembers all the times that she waited, such an ominous and tedious activity! Waiting rooms are hell on earth. Traffic lights are harrowingly disappointing. This is the end; pollution iscoming from the goddamn cars. Nothing good comes from waiting: an emergency room where you faint, an extracted tooth, a statuesque and unblinking woman saying: you have haunted enough this place. Heart plummeting, misty eyes charged with tears, tinnitus in my ears, flashes and flares of light incrementally perturbing my vision. She decides not to wait.

7 hours! An eternity! She still has so much time to make up her mind. It is not too late to leave, she could unpack now and go to the starting point, recede, retract, retrace her footsteps, burn her bridges. She could lapse into the zone where pigeons gather while she floats in a velvety atmosphere. Now she’ll sneak outside on scorching streets and cheer up.

6 hours. She could go to the shop and ask the Russian seller, what time it is.‘Time for you to make a decision,’- he’d say. And she’d beg him, ‘Take me somewhere, I want to be stripped of free will, I want to be doomed, to say: that was meant to happen.’

Hands in her pocket, she finds little trifles of her past: a small tablet, a daisy petal. She’s resourceful. What a valuable time capsule!

5 hours- still a lot of time to act. She’ll stay here, right in the middle of the room and face him, that’s what she’ll do. Soon the space grows darker and darker and she feels pain pulsating in her head. The room is a blister filled with amniotic fluid, where, woozy and uncontrollable, she concocts a plan of evasion. Like a prisoner, she’ll prepare her escape. But what if, running away from him, she’ll lose something valuable, irreplaceable. Vivid memories engrave her skin. Pale face, triumphant smirk, elusive hands. His bitter love follows her, when taking a shower to purify her heart, when eating an apple, when breathing, when gasping, he’ll be there, haunting.

3 hours- He’ll come, make your decision, you are too weak to stay or to run away, you are too weak to resist. In the room a rotten apple exudes pungent smells; the flies encircle it, ready to feast. She looks at it and takes pictures, but there is no apple. There is a sick, wet, lumpish hornet laying with two small legs trembling. The flies flutter ecstatically, hovering over the lethargic creature, filled with the smell of death.

60 minutes. She feels her thoughts building pressure like a snowball.  There is no future without him; if she stays she’ll regret it. Life is full of possibilities, of options that you weigh and weigh. Stay and be ravished, live and run the risk, go and elude the danger, fail and fall, gulp down the poison and the happiness.

30 seconds. Now she hears the wind blowing, dogs barking. Imperceptible nights and days will furtively pass, doors will close and open, he’ll come and go, and every now and then he’ll say ‘hello’, and fill her with loneliness. Lonely she will be, stripped of her future, both happy and grim, brooding: a deceitful woman in love.

5 seconds. She touches her pocket lining. She takes the pill and swallows it. Her name is Daisy and she still has time.