He sat on the veranda on the church grounds, opposite a cue of mourning people who had lost a relative. The clouds were heavy with rain, and the aroma of food wafted in from the church restaurant a few meters away. He moved from veranda to veranda, restless, holding his baby of about a year, his baby mama sat with others in an opposite cue of people who had come to pray for the fallen body of a physician to a close friend. One tear rolled down his bearded cheeks from one eye; he had been pressing his phone and speaking to various people for the previous two hours. Noises of stringed instruments and melancholy voices from a singing choir could be heard from inside the church, nuns and priests paced over in prepping for mass, and tootling cars could be heard from afar.
The lover approached where he was seated. Another eye generated a year and a phone rang, it was of a friend of his with whom they had done a job interview together. She wondered how to console her lover, a friend whose father had passed away and was indeed so close to the family. She overheard them discussing jobs, earnings, and interviews. Remembering that they had been hoping for feedback from a company with which he had done all of the interviews, but more importantly, they had assured him that his job search was over because he had passed all of the interviews. She began to wonder if they had called back and if that is why he is agitated.
I’m devastated about this fallen man; I don’t know him well, but he’s touched my heart. Tears had completely saturated his eyes at this point. She wondered once more about his lover’s excessive grief; could it be that he is worried about the dead man or something else? She hadn’t seen her lover cry in a long time except for the time he got emotional confessing his love for her three years ago. She dared to ask if they had gotten back to him from his interview, and he said yes, they had been a group of friends who did the interviews, but everyone had gotten a call except for him, though he still hoped beyond hope that the call would come through later in the day.
The phone call never came; it was yet another failed job search, the exhaustion, the lost hope, the forgotten Twilight, and the fallen body of a friend’s dad.
By G.Lakel Maria
