Lately, I’ve been doing plenty of waiting.
Waiting to board my flight, waiting to land, waiting to clear immigration. Waiting to come home, waiting to return to you, but first—waiting for you to come back to me, too. Waiting for my international parcel to arrive, though I am to blame for doing online shopping at this period of time, waiting for your text messages while you have terrible Wi-Fi. Waiting.
We are more than two-thirds done with this long distance. Fate has pulled a cruel trick on us, that when I am overseas you are home, and immediately when I return, off you go. No overlapping. Just pure waiting. And my heart is anxious, but there’s only so much I can do; I can’t wait to see you, but these days will crawl away just as slowly, ignorant of my burning desires, ignorant of how much intensely I miss you.
I love you like how a child loves candy, like how a child loves the warmth of a fireplace in the winter cold. I want you with the enthusiasm a child has, ripping open his present on the morning of white Christmas to receive his favourite thing ever.
My parcel is reaching me at a snail’s speed. DHL isn’t supposed to be so slow. I twiddle my thumbs and refresh the tracking page over and over again, then I realise that I’m the one who is expecting too much. Your Christmas present is very likely going to be delayed, because I’m the one who foolishly placed the order a little too late. Everything is a little twisted in time. I take too long to come to a decision, and suddenly this decision is too rash. And then, I have to wait.
I strike off days on my calendar, and every night when I go to sleep I imagine telling myself that when I wake up again, I’ll be one more day closer to seeing you. I look forward to night time, to the moment my head touches the pillow and my mind goes to rest, knowing that sleep is the fastest way of painless time travel, the easiest way to take me back to you. In the morning, I sleep in until I can’t stand my own laziness anymore. I get up and go about my day, but my day is so, so, empty without you.
The seconds are always ticking. Scientifically, they’re always ticking at the same rate. But this wait is so long, so arduous, so gloomily cold.
I can only hope for tonight to come, then tomorrow, then the day after that; until finally, you are here with me.
; 