While we wait..

The air in the dining room felt thick, clinging to my throat like unspoken words. My fork stabbed aimlessly at a congealed mound of rice, each jab echoing the gnawing worry in my gut. Across the room, big brother sat on his throne — the coffee coloured armchair that bore the silent testament of countless victories and anxieties. Tonight, it held him like a vise as he waits for a call from “The guy,”-a benefactor on the other end of the line to pick up. His phone is clutched in his palm with the weight of our hopes, of weeks spent living on the thin membrane of anticipation.

He breathed, deep and ragged like his thoughts. I knew the storm brewing within him, the tempest of hopes and fears that had been brewing for weeks. He is the firstborn, the one who carried the weight of our dreams on his broad shoulders.

I yearned to reach out, to offer the solace of a shared burden, to whisper reassurances I didn’t truly possess. I felt my words would be inadequate. I feared disrupting his fragile thoughts, the delicate balance between hope and despair.

So, I watched him in silence , stillness, punctuated only by the tick-tock of the clock, became our shared language. What was going on in his mind? I imagined his thoughts ,was it nervous anticipation, a giddy dance with possibility? Did doubt gnaw at the edges of his confidence, whispering insidious what-ifs into the quiet? Did he see the reflection of his own doubt in my wide, worried eyes?

The minutes stretched into an eternity, each tick of the clock a hammer blow against my already frayed nerves. His phone, a beacon of potential, mocked us with its stoic silence while we wait…