There are two benches outside my window. Old and brazen, they
sit facing each other over the crumbling earth. They speak to the leaves and
the trees around. Not to me. Not to each other. Like an old couple.
Once in a while, they grunt when someone sits over them. What
are you doing here, I ask them everyday. They don’t tell. The little plants outside
my window told me that the benches are waiting. They told me how happy they were
a few years ago. Then they had a fight once, over a cigarette bud a girl left
on the ground. Whose side it was on? No one could tell. More fights followed. Both
the benches threw dead leaves over each other. None got hurt. Disturbed,
they stopped talking to each other.
They’d flirt with my window sometimes, but my window is in
love with a snake. She tells me all the stories about the benches, all night
long. I don’t like her lover though, the snake. I have told her that he’s not a
nice guy. One early morning, I saw him cuddled with her. I got angry and
started hitting the window. Upset, she didn’t open herself for next few days. The
snake still comes over, as the little plants have told me. He sits under the benches
and hisses at my window.
The benches like him because he doesn’t like me. But they
still don’t talk to each other. The snake keeps them going. He doesn’t let
people sit over the benches. The benches like that too.
They can’t just break down anymore. It will kill the snake
under them. The old stones keep going, waiting for the snake to go, the time to
come, the trees to fall, and the people to leave ... Two empty benches outside
my window, a grumpy old couple.
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