three hours.

'What's the time now?'
'Yes, I am sorry..'
'Yes. Do you know, for how long I've been here?'

While alice wanted to talk more on her waiting, a question, what could've happened in the last three hours, anyway?, passed her mind.  Time, sometimes stalked her like a loud voice from behind, sometimes left her alone, too alone, that she could not guess if it was three hours, three days or three weeks -

They walked the street down a hill to a city, holding hands; passed an empty afternoon restaurant, sharp sirens of fire brigades, a church that never was open. People walked by, talking in loud voices. And then there was nothing, time had ceased to exist. But wasn't that a cliche’, a long forgotten and a despised one - time always exists, alice reminded herself - she was twenty seven years, six months, three weeks and three days old and tomorrow she was one day older.

Alice had waited for him by the street in front of a door to the empty afternoon restaurant. And there was snow falling on to her face, with the winds, for the first time in her life, so unlike her country in the tropics - it drained the sky, so unromantic so cold.

She stood there under an unlit marquee, shivering from first times which always were longer and heavier than the other times;
like kissing an ice cream dripping pair of lips
a pair of hands holding her breasts
nipples erect for the first conscious times
a slight beating pulse on a right hand - while she asked;
Is it really possible 
to be silent, could you not
hear your own heart beat
in every noiselessness -
so could it 
really be called silence
ever?

That word ever, sent a nerve unwinding across her body, when she first said it to him and when she remembered it now again in an afternoon of pale-white shiver,
why did we use such words so much,
words that no longer decompose.

And then he came, they held hands and walked down as she waited again, for
another three hours three days three weeks, may be there was another one
of the first times -  as they walked past the ever closed church, the ever loud people, noises.

She looked down the hill to an evening sky,
there was no more snow falling -
saw large clouds - of thoughts
of all those who went by and were ever there
spread across a city skyline;
endless lists
of me and mine
of the very first times
of kisses
of one's own cliche's,
they floated above and flowed with the winds,
slowly decomposed-
as did time.