So, I guess this is the suspended time we keep on talking about, a time that is not here, nor there.

Like the time that it didn’t want to become night because days in Summer do this sometimes, they glow forever of an orange light, and when you think that you can see the dark blue of the night creeping from east, or from west (I don’t know, I’ve never been good with directions), no, the light keeps on going, and becomes even stronger, and you are there, waiting for darkness to come, and you’ve been there the entire day waiting for the night to come because your mother, she told you to come home by dark, and while before you had to fight to be allowed to stay out one more minute, now they tell you to go, because they need the space, for themselves to fight and cry in peace without the presence of your piercing eyes, pleading for answers they don’t have. Was this a suspended time?

Or maybe suspended time was the time that you were waiting outside the big glass door, painfully aware that the black turtleneck jumper was too hot, and you had started sweating already inside the car, with your mother, father and brother, all excited and speechless, because you were going to be the first in your family with a university degree. And so, and while you were there, outside the big glass door, with the professors inside deciding on your final score, and you huddled outside with your mother who didn’t know what to do with her arthritic hands (of which you know she has always been ashamed of) and your father who would have killed for a smoke, and your brother, pacing the corridors self-conscious of the marble of the floor, and you, sweating and uncomfortable, with your heart pounding and your head spinning, can we call this a suspended time?

Or maybe, suspended time was that time you spent at the Melbourne Airport, waiting for your luggage to appear in the carousel, and you had been waiting already for a long time because your luggage had already come and gone and come and gone many times, but you couldn’t decide yourself to grab it, because once the luggage was in your hand, you had to step outside, where there was a new love, a new life waiting for you, and were scared because after all those months of letter-writing, and before the internet, you didn’t remember his face and you didn’t remember what it felt like, that feeling that had overwhelmed you with such a violence to tear you away from your life and your home, and you had travelled the world to be with him and you were scared at having forgotten his face, and to let your luggage pass yet one more time in front of you, it seemed the only thing to do. So, was that a suspended time?

And while I’m here, writing this considerations at 11 thousand five hundred and eighty-three metres altitude, two hours forty-two from reaching destination, here, now, trapped inside this plane, with every power, will, decision taken away from me, because there is nothing that you can do or will or decide during the 23 hours-long flight, and so, and then, and you might as well let every wish, thought, desire, and idea go because maybe the meaning of suspended time is just that, the literal meaning of being suspended, halfway through, inside a plane.