I kept going back to that evening, you know? It was raining. We were in your car. I was listening to you talk, but my eyes were focused on the wiper moving back and forth on the windshield.
The wiper would clear the drops, and more would arrive, and it’d come back to clear them, and more would arrive. What a sad state of affairs, at first, and yet, that’s the one thing it was good at: wiping the drops.
I heard you say something confusing, some bullshit about the universe and how our lives aren’t just our own. “You’ll be the death of me if this keeps happening every year,” I chuckled.
You’ll be the death of me. What a sad thing to say to someone you love, at first, and yet, that’s the one thing you can muster out loud when you’re exhausted, when you’re tired of trying.
“It’s you who has to choose, love, the universe gives up too,” I said, and looked at you, helplessly, and saw all those years at once—coincidence upon coincidence, chance upon chance.
I saw us missing each other every single time. Sometimes, by just a day! Year by year, I saw you leave things in the hands of fate. What a sad thing to leave your life in the hands of, at first, and yet, it’s the only thing you have ever done.
I kept going back to it, you know? I kept going back to staring at that wiper on your fucking windshield, clearing the drops blindly, mechanically, fanatically. I heard you decide for the both of us—the decision being no decision at all.
I like to believe I never saw you after that night, even though I ran into you once. Perhaps, that was the last chance, but I never got up to talk to you. I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet. Maybe, it was a mistake?
I kept going back to that evening, though. I never saw you since. The windshield has popped into my head every single time it has poured since. Until I passed by that fork in the road the other day, and it started raining. It made me recall your bullshit of the universe. I stood there dolefully.
Then, I reckoned, the universe grew tired. I knew it would, at some point. I’m sure it had better things to do.
I smiled, realising: so did I.