Waiting

• Emily Barakat, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2009

The ornate wooden benches were positioned to take advantage of the morning sun. They were placed so that whoever sat on them might look across the garden from a pool of watery sunlight. From those benches one might almost forget it was winter. They sat contentedly, angled in to converse with the small coffee table. The coffee pot likewise eyed the milk jug.

No one came.

A stiff and conservative lattice stood to the side. His faithless wife: the jasmine vine, was entwined around him, but stretched a tendril towards her husband’s friend, the wooden post which supported them both.

Still, no one came.

The lavender bushes sat hunched over in the garden, their straggly leaves shuddering under the winter frost. None of them bore any of their characteristic mauve which might have distinguished them from other plants. Only one sapling broke the monotony of colour. It blushed a brilliant red as it discovered that it was the only one carrying the leftovers of autumn.
The benches shifted their feet on the cold concrete of the patio. Soon people would come and warm the place with laughter.

But no one came.

The icy fingers of grass shifted as the small pool of sunlight spread and melted the frozen dew. One small grassy hand had clawed its way through a crack in the concrete; it flexed its joints as a sharp breeze blew across the patio, readying itself for being trodden on when the laughter came.

It didn’t need to. The laughter didn’t come. No one came.

They all sat in silence. Waiting. A diamond of silence: hard, cold, breathtaking, and unbreakable.
Until the coffee pot remarked quietly to the milk jug: “Coffee’s gone cold.”