Why didn't they come?

The endless creaking of the gate... The tiny breathy hiss, the click, the zing of metal grating on metal.
Made the child I once was, lift my head with simple longing, knowing that it was probably just the wind, again, knowing it... is... just...the... wind.
One would think I would have learnt by then, again and again, that hiss, the click, the grated zing, but, no.
Again and again, as hours drag by, as the light suffusing the garden, changes from quicksilver, to iridescent yellow, to tempered gold to dark shadowy mustard and then silver, the hiss, the click, the zing, and... it is just the wind.
Watching ants filing into cracks between the cement driveway, existing in their microcosmic universe, chipper under their burdens, watching the breeze riffling through the leaves like fond hands through curly hair, watching the strangers through the gates, walking mincing dogs, heavy legged, drooling dogs.

Why didn't they come?

Hiss, click, zing.

Why?

It has been so many years, since I was that child, waiting there alone for all those hours, lost somewhere in time. The house on Honey Street, is crumbling, even in memory, forever lost in urban sprawl and solemn retrospection .

The garden, my refuge, and its metal gate have vanished into lingering shadows, yet echoes of the hiss, the click, the grated zing which cried "I made you look" in wind notes still plays on...
I know now about the wind, how it blows, how it loves to riffle locks and conform into tiny spaces, how it riffles, and teases and flusters and blusters and blows.
I even know, why they... never... came.

Hiss, click, zing.

I lift my head, listening, for an instant in time...

the breath of the open gate, the whispered grind.
I can sense the coming...