Waiting

***based on an assignment where the students were asked to use words and phrases from favorite books and compose a short piece about a character in motion.

A woman stood waiting at the end of the pier. She was eager to escape the endless boredom, eager to escape a life filled with secondhand dreams and lost opportunity. Her hair blew violently in the wind. She tried to push it away and noticed that her forehead had begun to perspire. The cold sweat made her shiver. Her eyes darted from the riverbank to the walls of the wounded city, a place she was never able to call home. A crowd had begun to collect around her, clustered on the pier like seagulls anticipating a free meal. They simply stood and stared, waiting for the wind to shift, waiting for something to happen in a place where nothing ever happens. The woman knew she needed to get on that boat before the last shred of her thin spirit was smoldered by the dormant minds of her small town. She stood there waiting all afternoon; nothing arrived but the wind.