the benches outside my window

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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