I was sitting in a dim-lit bar on Fifth Street, the kind of place where the neon buzzed louder than the conversations. The bartender, Joe or Jim—names didn’t stick anymore—slid a whiskey across the sticky counter. I nodded, tossed a crumpled bill beside the glass.
“Big plans tonight?” he asked.
“I go home later,” I said.
He grunted, moved down the bar to refill someone else’s poison. It wasn’t until I felt the burn of the whiskey that I realized what I’d said. “I go home later,” not “I’ll go home later.” The future tense had slipped away like the last train at midnight.
I looked around the bar. People hunched over their drinks, eyes glazed, mouths moving in sync with the tired music from a jukebox that hadn’t been updated in decades. Snippets of conversations floated through the stale air.
“She calls me tomorrow,” a man muttered into his beer.
“We meet at the corner,” a woman whispered to her friend, lipstick smudged, hope fading.
No one spoke of the future like it was something real. It was all present tense, as if tomorrow was just a rumor they’d heard once but didn’t quite believe.
Outside, the city breathed its usual smoggy sigh. I lit a cigarette, the smoke curling upward, disappearing into the night. Streets were littered with yesterday’s news, headlines blaring catastrophes that no one remembered. A stray dog sniffed at a trash can, finding nothing, moving on.
I walked aimlessly, the sidewalk cracks guiding me nowhere. Billboards flashed ads for products promising instant gratification. “Get it now,” they screamed. No one sold futures anymore; the warranties had all expired.
At a corner, I saw Maria. She stood under a flickering streetlight, its dying glow casting long shadows under her eyes. We used to talk, back when words meant something.
“Hey,” I said.
She looked up, eyes reflecting the city’s neon haze. “Hey.”
“Where you headed?”
“I grab a coffee,” she replied.
“Mind if I join?”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
We walked to an all-night diner, the kind that pretended time didn’t exist. Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed, and the vinyl seats stuck to your skin. We slid into a booth, ordered two coffees. No one asked if we wanted cream or sugar. Choices were illusions here.
Maria stared into her cup. “People don’t talk about the future anymore,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. “What’s there to say?”
“Used to be plans, dreams. Now it’s just… this.” She gestured vaguely, her hand encompassing the worn linoleum, the peeling wallpaper, the tired souls hunched over cold meals.
I sipped my coffee. It was bitter, like everything else. “Maybe we got tired of pretending.”
“Maybe,” she said, tracing a finger around the rim of her cup. “But don’t you miss it? Thinking about what’s next?”
I thought about it. The future had always been some distant horizon, a mirage that receded as you approached. “What’s the point? World keeps spinning whether we think about it or not.”
She looked at me, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I used to believe in tomorrow.”
“What changed?”
She laughed softly. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. Feels like we’re stuck in this endless present.”
I glanced around the diner. A couple argued in hushed tones at the counter. A solitary man stared blankly at a newspaper dated two days ago. The waitress leaned against the wall, chewing gum, eyes vacant.
“Maybe the future just isn’t what it used to be,” I said.
She sighed. “I tried talking to friends about plans, you know? Vacations, careers, love. They look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Maybe I am,” she echoed. “Feels like words are losing their meaning.”
I didn’t have an answer. We sat in silence, the diner’s noise filling the void between us.
“Do you think language shapes how we see the world?” she asked suddenly.
“I think the world shapes our language,” I replied. “We talk about what we know. Right now, all we know is today.”
“But what about hope? Aspirations?”
I shrugged. “Hope’s a tricky thing. Can lift you up or drop you from ten stories high.”
She gazed out the window. “I just don’t want to believe that this is all there is.”
I followed her gaze. The street outside was empty except for a lone figure shuffling along, head down, footsteps heavy.
“Maybe it’s not,” I said quietly. “But maybe we have to make peace with the present before we can think about the future.”
She turned back to me. “And have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Made peace with the present.”
I considered the question. The whiskey, the aimless walks, the empty conversations—they were all symptoms of a life in limbo. “Not yet,” I admitted.
“Me neither,” she said. “But I want to try.”
I looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in a long while. “How?”
She smiled faintly. “By believing that words still matter. That maybe, if we start talking about the future again, it’ll start to feel real.”
I wanted to tell her she was chasing ghosts, that the world had moved on and left us behind. But something in her eyes held me back.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said instead.
“Maybe,” she replied. “Will you try with me?”
The question hung in the air. A commitment to something uncertain, a step toward a horizon that might not exist.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “I will.”
She nodded, a small victory. “Thank you.”
We finished our coffee in silence, but it felt different now. The silence was no longer a void but a canvas.
Outside, the first light of dawn crept over the buildings, painting the sky with hues of pink and orange. A new day, indistinguishable from the last, yet carrying the weight of possibilities.“
I should get going,” she said.
“Where to?”
She paused. “I think I’ll visit my sister. Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Sounds good.”
She looked at me expectantly. “And you?”
I took a deep breath. “I might… I will head to the old bookstore. See if they have anything worth reading.”
She smiled genuinely. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
I chuckled softly. “Guess not.”
We parted ways, and as I walked toward the bookstore, I noticed the city stirring awake. Shopkeepers lifted grates, street vendors set up carts, a kid chased a dog down the sidewalk. Life moving forward, whether we acknowledged it or not.
At the bookstore, the familiar musty scent welcomed me. Shelves towered around me, guardians of forgotten worlds. I wandered aimlessly until a book caught my eye: “Horizons Lost and Found.”
I pulled it from the shelf, flipping through pages yellowed with age. Passages about explorers chasing sunsets, poets dreaming of tomorrows, societies built on the promise of the future.
I bought the book and stepped back into the street. The sun was higher now, the city bathed in its glow. I thought about Maria, about our conversation. Maybe the future wasn’t a given, but perhaps it was something we could still reach for.
As I walked home, I practiced speaking in futures. “I will read this book,” I murmured. “I will call my brother.” The words felt foreign, but not unwelcome.
A woman passed by, humming a tune. An old man fed pigeons, scattering crumbs with a steady hand. The world was still flawed, still heavy with the weight of its own making, but maybe there was room for more.
Back in my apartment, I sat by the window, the book open on my lap. I read stories of people who dared to dream beyond their present, who used words to build bridges to unseen shores.
I picked up a pen and a worn notebook. The blank page stared back at me, a challenge and an invitation.
“I will write,” I wrote.
And so I did.
The words flowed slowly at first, then with increasing ease. Thoughts, hopes, fragments of a future I hadn’t dared to consider.
The day passed unnoticed, the sun arcing across the sky and dipping below the horizon. The room grew dim, but I continued writing, the darkness no longer a barrier.
When I finally set down the pen, I felt a strange sensation—a lightness, a quiet stirring of something long dormant.
I thought of Maria and wondered if she’d reached her sister’s place, if she felt the same shift. I decided I would call her tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
The word tasted new, full of potential.
I went to bed, and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t dread the coming day. Sleep came easily, dreams filled with colors and faces and places yet to be.
Maybe the future wasn’t lost after all. Maybe it was waiting for us to find the words to bring it back into focus.
As I drifted into deeper sleep, one final thought lingered.
“I will hope.”