The coSmic waiting room

In the cosmic waiting room they sat. Tense.
She was free but he wasn't. That was a problem.
Old fashioned ridiculously sweet integrity meant they couldn't touch. Yet. Show her your joy. Let her show you her vastness.

And that 'yet' was all it took to keep them both coming back to the same park bench at the same time every week.

He used to say, " jesus you couldn't write this stuff".
No way would anyone belive it. Tenderness? Surely
That died in the eighties.
It's all dick pics and fuck before you say your name.

Hard. That's too hard. You'd have to be pretending or be drunk.

Tenderness. Sweet first kisses. Flowers? Letters? Romantic notes?
Walks in a park just savouring the magnetic hormones blasting through your blood stream.
Enjoying a sweet picnic?

Just dog rough people are grinding the wonder out of each other.

I met an older lady. Shining. Husband passed away a year ago.

Married for 60 years met at 14.
He was the first boy she'd kissed. She missed him shaking. Her spine missed him.

Tenderly. Remember the last time something tender happened to you?


So they met. At the bench. And were sweet. He held her in her most painful place and then she held him in his.

Old Steve down at the Parks Department used to pull them up on the big screen and call the three junior lads over.

“See that lads!? That’s how it’s done. Romance her me boys romance her!”

Tenderly.

He walk around as the clown trying to hide that he saw them and all of them. It's written in the way they carry their instruments.  Their bodies. They built their bodies and now when they walk they tell the whole story.

Joke? No problem.  Can't hold everyone's pain.
But she was what?
She stood with all the pain of the crucified behind her. Shining golden into every face that she met.

And he didn't know much about that level of blessedness but he knew enough to stay beside her not touching just being her eternal lover.

Tenderness out of spite for the stolen female.

Tenderness from the heart of the broken fiddle.

Tenderness to its very end twisting to make it fit.

Tenderness like nobody had ever seen before just sitting between them on the Cosmic Waiting Room Bench. Nothing missing.