She sits, and she is alone. Every now and again she looks up as if she is waiting for someone to come and sit next to her, a friend perhaps. If they are running late she shows no signs of losing patience. With a heavy sigh she quickly stands up and walks away taking long, fast strides that seem perfectly calculated, as if she is forcing her legs not to break into a sprint.

There are some days that she sits longer than others, pretending that she has something of great importance to do but she is never too busy to look up and around to search the crowd for that person who never seems to show up. Every day holds the same meaningless routine, only the times change. If you asked around you would be hard pressed to find any one person who knows her name and it seems that is exactly the way she wants it; she is aloof and nonchalant, moving quickly and quietly, never breaking eye contact with the world and holding an expression on her face that is fearless and accented by rock solid confidence. This, of course, is a lie.

She is in the day room now watching the ping pong ball bounce back and forth across the faded green table. She could continue this for hours and still not be able to tell you the score. Pretending to be bored with everything is her best talent and she is perfecting it now as she zones out; staring at the painted bricks behind the ping pong table as if the masons hid the answer to the meaning of life in the mortar and if she stared hard enough the mystery would reveal itself. All of this while contemplating whether or not she should scroll through her phone's contact list for the fifth or sixth time that morning, or if she would rather sit and listen to the soft knocking sound of the hollow ball as it hits the table and is returned by the paddle. Maybe someone will call or maybe she will call someone, but who is really up this time of morning? Probably no one she knows but maybe this time whoever she has been waiting for will call. No luck.

Always with a sigh, she leaves her place on the slip covered couch and goes into the next room and slowly sits down in the 1980s desk chair, wiggles the mouse around and clicks the internet icon. To her delight, there is an email waiting for her, but when she sees who it is from the corners of her mouth that almost formed a smile fall back into their position of general disapproval... it is from that weird guy in her computer She rolls her eyes and laughs so hard that her body shakes and she hiccups reading the five lined note explaining how his heart "is drawn to her". She has only spoken to him once and said nothing to imply that she wished to pursue a relationship of any sort.

By herself she is safe, wrapped in her own thoughts. No one can touch her and nothing hurts, except, that is, for the solitude itself. She is unable to scale the walls she has constructed so she sits silently waits and despite the days, the weeks, and the months, there is nothing and no one. There she sits again and she is alone.