20 Years

(A friend's story)

I was sitting in my son’s car, just a few meters away from Walmart.

He parked and asked:

“Will you go in?”

“No.”

“But you used to work here…”

“I can’t.”

He looked surprised.

How could I explain to him that I couldn’t walk in as a customer?

That place is like a temple to me. Something sacred.

Inside that big store, under the high ceiling, among all those people, she works.

Her name starts with the letter “L.”

She is more beautiful than anyone else.

And she is younger than me.

How can I go in?

No… I don’t have the courage.

Once, I told her what I had been carrying in my heart for so long.

She answered quietly:

“Twenty years ago… maybe we could have been together.”

That’s it.

I am missing twenty years.

So I can’t go in.

I stand like a man who missed his train,

on an empty railway in the middle of nowhere.

And I remember her.

And that memory keeps me warm.