Mayan

I’d only had half a sandwich and a glass of juice for lunch. Somehow, it wasn’t as disappointing as it sounded. It filled the space in my stomach without making me sleepy, which I suppose is all lunch really needs to do.

Still, I couldn’t shake a strange heaviness in my chest. I don’t know why I feel what I feel. And the more I try to explain it—even to myself—the more it slips away, like trying to catch the shape of a cloud before the wind changes it.

It was a fine afternoon, though the sun was nowhere to be seen. The sky had pulled on a thick grey blanket, and you could almost smell the idea of rain in the air. The garden was mostly empty. A few scattered people, an elderly man reading a newspaper, a young couple sitting apart but holding hands under the table. But the space around the old bench was untouched.

I’ve never understood people’s obsession with new things. The way they throw away something that has been with them for years the moment it shows a crack or a fade in color. What about the time you’ve spent with it? The photographs it sits in? The way it has shaped itself around your life, quietly? But no, once it catches the eye in the wrong way, out it goes.

When I reached the bench, the first thing I saw was the diary. It was there, exactly where I’d left it. A flicker of something anxiety, maybe tightened in my chest. Yesterday, I’d written in a rush, my mind tangled, my hand moving faster than my thoughts could settle. The words came out in a way that might have made it hard for her to understand what I meant. Now, standing there, I had no idea if she had understood my message at all.

I took the diary and sat down on the bench. The wood felt cool beneath me, carrying the weight of the afternoon in its grain. When I opened it, there it was an entry from yesterday. Short, but enough. I think she agreed. Maybe she understood the message. Maybe she caught what I’d been trying to say between the lines.

Thoughts began leaping through my head so quickly that it felt like my mind had turned into a zoo animals running wild, crashing into one another, their cages long forgotten.

I started writing again. About the weather. About the people I’d seen today. And, inevitably, about love. Love is my favorite subject, though it also has the power to make me restless, uneasy. Sometimes I avoid it like you avoid a too-bright light after waking from a long sleep. But it has a way of slipping in, uninvited.

When I finished, I left a small note beneath her latest words. when? It didn’t need to be more.

Somehow, hours had passed without my noticing. It always happens like this here. Time folds itself differently on this bench. Minutes become hours, and hours become minutes.I placed the diary back in its usual spot, gave the bench a quiet goodbye, and left.