The Waiting

by Nico Deany
9/24/24

Waiting is holding oxygen in your lungs until it curdles and grows over with mold. I can feel the spores float in the stagnant air of my chest. If I stay perfectly still, will the pores on my arms and legs and the backs of my hands open and can I breathe through my skin? But I can’t stay still, until you respond. So I will count the floating spores like seconds until I can breathe again. One, two, three, four, seven, nine, two hundred and eighty-five. You still don’t say anything, but I’ve run out of spores to count, and the walls of my lungs are now carpeted in moss. I am afraid to peel it back and see the raw pink tissue and torn up truth underneath. Because clarity is only a comforting thing to want, and a very uncomfortable thing to have. The mosses’ tendrils wave with the breeze when I finally part my lips, and out comes a careful stream of air. I am breathing again.

Impatience is the buds forming in the forest that sprouted from waiting. You haven’t said a word, and it’s been one, two, three, four, seven, nine, two hundred and eighty-five minutes. The seconds crawl, a steady stream of ants, up my esophagus and onto the tip of my tongue. They build themselves a home there, hiding anxiously in the cavities on my molars and under my swollen gums. We are all impatient for you to say something back. Don’t turn a molehill into a mountain, but what happens if it’s an anthill, and what happens then?

Worry is the blossoms that bloom from the buds of impatience. The flowers face the sun that streams in through my mouth and down my throat to greet them. The flowers shake their heads in apprehension for words that aren’t coming. This tickles my chest, and I laugh; not because it’s funny, it’s actually kind of uncomfortable. So it would really help if you would respond. And when the flowers shake their petal manes, they free their pollen. This pollen then floats through my veins, latching onto my blood cells and seeking out every nook and cranny of my body. I am filled with worry’s children, which just happens to grow into more worry.

I begin to pick at my skin; if I dig deep enough maybe I can reach in and pull out the worry. This seems like a good idea. I double over my corrupted body. But when I bend to begin digging, the ants’ world turns upside down, and they tumble from my open mouth, and the forest in my lungs folds in half. Now there are ants swarming my lap. My folded lungs are too filled with moss to take in air. I cough. I cough again and again and again. Until the roots of the moss and the flowers and the mold dislodge from my lung’s pink walls, and I vomit up an ecosystem. It is then you decide to respond.

Your response is clean air coursing through my body. The vomit in my lap is the product of extended waiting.

***

(This piece is part of our yearlong series called Heart Beets that features the work of a group of teen writers, giving us a glimpse into their journey through the school year.)