moi

“Am I in love? – Yes, since I am waiting.”
The other one never waits.
Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn’t wait;
I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late;
but I always lose at this game:
whatever I do, I find myself there,
with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.
The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this:
I am the one who waits.

-Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse