A Lifetime of Keys and Doors

The waiting room is occupied.

There they are again, seated across the gates of infinity, in wait beside each other. It’s been the nth life they’ve appeared here with his dirt-stained clothes and her quiet demeanor, like the past histories before them. They sat in silence. The white wall served as a backdrop, giving the two familiar strangers a sole spotlight for the waiting game. He straightens up and clicks his neck, adjusting the collar of his white uniform before placing his palms flat on his lap. She blinks and leans back against the furnished Lawson chair, stretching her legs and crossing them in one motion. Her red traje de mestiza shines under the weight of the stars looming above them. They both sigh after doing so.

Exhilaration. Adrenaline. Grief. Pain. Joy. Emptiness.

The cycle of emotions brewing inside the mind of a person entering the waiting room. This place is nirvana for people trapped all their lives, who yearn of a future they cannot create. Their last dying wish was a rewritten song about their failed endeavor in changing the course of their life. They would look at the stars and see a comet pass before they slipped into the graces of death itself. They would wake up inside the waiting room, faced with infinite doors and only one key to the future that they seek. Leaning on and waiting upon the call of their own souls, on which path they should take to compose the untitled rhythm of their hearts.

Sometimes it would take months or years for one to reach a decision, but not these two. Opening their doors, revisiting, ending up here at the same time. Their failures repeating itself with every timeline they enter. His was the fight for freedom. A lone general, raised in the oppressive times of Spanish reign. Inside his heart a hunger for independence brewed, blazing forth and challenging the old ways of elders. They cannot get peace unless people fight for it. Hers was the fight for justice. A woman up for marriage, birthed as a bargaining chip. Her heart beat for a future free of abuse and exploitation, paving a road with the outspoken passion inside of her and standing forth against old laws. People are priceless, each with dreams you cannot take away. Responsibilities rest on their shoulders, to each their own burden to carry.

It’s a frustrating affair, having to come across this open waiting room in the middle of the universe. The swirl of stars and comets below their feet have grown dull in their many escapades of ending up in this very place. He scratches his ear. Looking side to side, the walls facing east and west stretch farther than his weary eyes could go. Every blink he makes changes the scenery in front of him. If he focuses hard enough, no-man’s-land shows itself. Soldiers and rice sacks filled with sand cover half of his point of view. A blink. It fills a dainty town hidden behind the battlefield with crying children and widows longing for their dead husbands. He trains his gaze up ahead. With a sigh, he sits up on his circular wooden stool and waits.

She tugs on the pearl earring pierced through her right ear, caressing and pinching it lightly. She gazes up to steel, iron arching above her, meeting at a single point and shooting to a circle. Beyond the steel was a pristine white ceiling, adorned with bright chandeliers glistening with the sunlight. Hands swipe themselves above the steel circle, touching it, inserting their ring finger through the hole and lifting it up. She stumbles a bit in her seat. Music makes its way through her ears, illustrating stories of grandeur and sparkling wine, glasses clinking against each other, spilling to the carpeted floor. She closes her eyes, shakes her head, and looks forward. Exhaling, she sits upright and waits.

They have no words to say to each other, as the times before them. The waiting room was a place for people to wait, in wait, for wait. Conversation, banter, connections, these were things that you cannot erase from one’s memory. Things stored inside the heart of those who dwell on the edge of beginning and end were things that will etch itself in time. Here in the waiting room, they wait for a sign to continue on with their lives. They wait for the key the master holds before passing through one of the doors spread infinitely in front of them. Choose and go. Yet, they wait for something they cannot reach. Neither of them are making a move, stuck in their own internal dilemma.

With every visit they made, they stayed a little longer than before. Stepping inside the waiting room and brushing shoulders as they sat a chair away from each other, their hearts grew fonder every time. It was wrong to do so when they had people waiting for them to change the direction of their own wars. At times, they would sit and watch the passing doors together, playing with the key in their hands. Rolling it, caressing it, tapping it against their chairs. The both of them hummed and created music from the depths of their hearts, unspoken lyrics hang in the air. In the middle of the universe, they created a symphony heard by the stars below and the blanket of the surrounding night.

If only there was another lifetime, a world where their responsibilities intertwined and the waiting room ceased to exist. All these possibilities swirling in their irises, a pool of hope and innocence.

If only—!

Gasps resonate through the waiting room; Their hands slipping and landing on the chair between them, linking their two worlds and creating a moment written in the hands of time. They stare into each other’s eyes as tears continue to run down their faces in euphoria. Their keys clink, presenting a choice of opening a door or staying here in wait together. Here in the waiting room, where their music had become one, they will try.

Inhale. Exhale.

“Hello—”

As quick as they uttered it, their keys repelled from each other, a static running up their nerves in shock. Sobs fill the waiting room as tears choke up in their throats. A reverie now erased.

The waiting room is empty.