The Cold Waiting Season

7:45 a.m. the beep of my cell phone pulled me out of my unconscious, sweet state. Yeah, that is not a good way to wake up. Why can’t I wake up with the morning light of the sun and the soft birds’ noises? The truth is that it’s my own fault. Last night, on my bed, I couldn’t quit my reading. Every chapter made me long for another one and the opening words of the first new paragraph got me completely unwilling to close the book. I looked the time on my cell phone screen (I do have a clock in my night table, which ticks, but for months its hands haven’t move.) and I say begging to it, “just another chapter.” It kept silent looking me with serious 11:34 p.m. eyes. I submerge again in my reading, discovering more feelings of m favorite characters; imagining their world, their lives; giving them faces and voices, forgetting my own.

When I looked back at the screen, it told me I’ve read fast enough this chapter. “Give me more time!” I screamed in my head though it came out as a whisper (my sister had fallen sleep hours ago.) as if the cell phone had asked me “what do you want?”

“10 minutes before midnight”, yes, I could read one chapter more. I had begun reading when a noise in my sister’s room raised all my fears to my mind. It was my mom with no doubt. Without thinking, I turned off my lamp as fast as I could silently with fear that the knob of my door would be turned around by my mother’s hand. I could hear her voice already scolding me and could see her silhouette against the hall’s light standing in the door. “No, no, no, no,” I repeated in my mind while I closed the heavy book and placed it under my pillow.

It got silent. I was safe. No one opened the door. Soon every noise in the house ceased, and my parents’ room door was shut closed. I was left alone to myself. “I won’t open the book again,” I said as a promise to God. I wouldn’t. Soon, hundreds of thoughts ran into my mind. I was worried about the future but tried to focus on the present. The past brought me some questions but ‘I placed them neatly on the shelf’. There I started to talk to Mister God. I prayed, I asked again. “Take away any fear from me,” was my last plea.

Rolling from one side to another in my bed, I found out my mind was too clear and awake as to sleep. “What? I won’t be able to sleep now?” I asked God. Instead of opening the book, I grab my pen and my notebook from the night table and wrote down what I had in mind, thinking that if I waited for the morning it would be gone. Writing the last line I just had one virtual place in my mind and heavy eyelids over my eyes…