The Comedy

You’re at a bus stop. The signboard insists the bus comes at 9:15. Your watch disagrees. The city disagrees. The universe, frankly, doesn’t care. You keep staring at the pavement crack like it holds secrets, while life coughs and scrolls around you. Ten minutes pass. Twenty. You know the punchline already: the bus isn’t coming. But you keep waiting anyway, because apparently stubbornness is a sports. 

You’ve always been good at sports, haven’t you? Sprinting into silence, high-jumping over questions, weightlifting other people’s expectations. If sarcasm were an Olympic event, you’d be sponsored by Nike by now.

Of course, you’ve perfected the “I’m fine” costume. Straight face stitched with fake laughter, pockets full of half-baked jokes. You wear it like armor, even though it pinches at the ribs. Everyone claps for the performance. No one sees the backstage collapse.

Time, the world says, is a healer. Cute. Time is not a doctor—it’s a lazy decorator. It doesn’t fix things; it just moves the furniture until you bang your knee somewhere else. First the sofa, now the coffee table. Pain, just better disguised.

And the dreams. God bless your brain for the free cinema. Every night it screens reruns you never bought tickets for. Same cast, same script, different lighting. You wake up laughing, because crying would mean the joke got old. Spoiler: it didn’t.

The so-called “golden hours”? Expired. Nobody stamped the date, but you found out the hard way when the glow dimmed into buzzing fluorescent bulbs. They flicker like they’re mocking you, daring you to pretend they’re sunlight.

And those conversations—you know the ones. The earth-shattering epics of “Don’t forget your keys” and “Did you eat?” Mundane syllables, now haunting like hymns. Who knew ordinary could echo like a cathedral when replayed at 2 a.m.? But sure, keep laughing it off—it’s cheaper than admitting the truth.

Maybe you enjoy it, though. Maybe this tragicomedy of absence is your favorite show. Maybe hollow laughter tastes better when you pretend it’s champagne. Bravo. Standing ovation for your performance.

Your trick is flawless: pull normalcy out of thin air, keep the crowd distracted. Smoke, mirrors, applause. Meanwhile, your costume drips red where the knives got too close. But the audience never notices. They never do.

Then comes the ambush. A song in a café. A stranger’s perfume. The shadow of a street corner. Ordinary objects staging mutiny, dragging you back into scenes you swore you’d locked away. Sarcasm tries to shield you, but even sarcasm rusts.

So you bargain with yourself. Spin bedtime stories where timing works, buses arrive, people stay. Lies, yes. But lies are good interior designers—they hang curtains over the wreckage so you can breathe for a moment. Until they leave you choking in the dark again.

And still, you walk. Shoes heavier each day, pavement cracking under your silence. You joke louder, smile sharper, spend sarcasm like loose change. Because as long as the jokes keep flowing, no one asks why your eyes look like unfinished sentences.

But here’s the cruelest irony: you know the ending already. You’ve always known. The bus was never late. It was never coming—because the one you were waiting for got off long before you arrived.