Waiting- by Chrisy Vest

This guest post is by my dear friend Christy Vest author of Dandelion Markings....

"The room is quiet. Its’ strange, don’t you think, that a place filled with so much expectation, waiting—energy!—should be so still? I suppose when you’re anticipating something of which you’re unsure, that’s how it would feel: silence born out of the humbling knowledge that we really don’t know. I want to know, so I wait. How much do I want to know? I don’t know. I might be waiting for a while.

This is no gripping, mysterious court-room tale, ending in the suspense of waiting for a verdict. Nor even a story of forbidden love, with the forbidden lovers waiting in the forbidden parlor for forbidden lover’s father’s approval. Really, this isn’t a tale as most people think a tale should go.

Unsure of who should speak first—need anything be said?—everyone stalls by alternately avoiding gazes and staring with knowing glances. We all want to know. Will we?

We’re always told to write what we know. I’ve never been on a jury nor have I been a forbidden lover. I have waited, though, and expected and anticipated and hoped for—

How is the bond between people in a same place and situation formed? It’s odd how two strangers become sudden, magically connected kindred in a moment of action or reaction and redemption.

We’re also told—I’m told—to write what everyone else knows. You know what it is to expect and, often, be let down so that you wonder if it’s possible to ever trust again.

We are held in those eternally preserved and understood days of Marianne Dashwood in London, anxiously watching the door for the time when Mr. Willoughby would walk through…and he doesn’t.

The sweat pours off our brows just as much as Sam Gamgee’s as he stands in Mount Doom, begging Mr. Frodo to cast the Ring into the fires of the mountain.

Please! is echoed in our ears and at the backs of our palates, quickly moving to the tip of the tongue.

The quiet room isn’t “a” quiet room. It is “the” eternally quiet room. And I’m still waiting."