Wait

here we still are

“The Abundancy of Friendship,” Beth Kephart, Collage

I hear it when I’m talking to my new, dear friend JWB. Wait, I’ll say. Wait. Wait.

Wait. There’s more. Wait: You won’t believe this part. Wait: I just remembered or I buried the lede or I need to repeat myself, for emphasis. 

Wait, JWB. Wait. Wait.

From whence so much wait? I can’t recall hearing the word in me before, by which I mean the ubiquity of the word, the insistence of the word, the plea. Wait: I shall begin again. Wait: Another minute, please. Wait: I shall connect these dots. Wait may be my shorthand in the heat of rush—a topple of words finding their own pause. Wait may be my stage of life—that damned clock just keeps ticking. Wait may be my verbal tic or the inherent convolutions of my telling.

But wait may also be—I’m sure wait is—the common crush, the common cause. Because we’re all just waiting, aren’t we—waiting to find out what will happen next, waiting to know if we will be okay, waiting to get to that part of the film where the good guys take center stage. In this world of now, we find ourselves rearranging our stories and our lives, wheel-wobbling back from the cliff edge of anxiety, promising ourselves that there will be another day, and that we will rise to the occasion of it, and that our friend will call and we will say to her, Wait, wait: There is more. Wait, wait: There is us. Wait, wait: Here we still are, in the abundancy of friendship.