Just Another Warm Night

I sent you an innocuous message, just asking how things were. I didn’t expect anything of it. I didn’t expect a reply even, not in light of the fact that I may have let my tongue loose and become too transparent.

But I did act stupid, checking more often than I normally would for a reply. Inevitably I felt stupid and out of control and forced myself to act better. I kept wondering why I was checking for a reply. I wish I could understand how I felt, why a short, dull twinge of disappointment. I lay on the couch, looking at the TV, my head vacant.

I turned off the phone and smiled at myself for acting like a teenager and walking down the same wheel again. I laughed out aloud at the cycle that always seems to repeat and the hopelessness of it and felt so very stupid. I felt sad for allowing it to happen again.

It was a warm and humid night, one that makes it unbearable to cover yourself, where the sheets feel cool but quickly become too warm, the slightest breeze making it more bearable.

You called after I had fallen asleep. I didn’t/couldn’t pick up the phone. I heard your voice mail. Your voice reminded me of a lost little girl. Perhaps that was just me imagining things. Perhaps it was just an extension of a humid night in a befuddled and tired brain. I wanted to call you back and ask you how you were doing, what you felt, were you sad, happy, lost and unsure hoping I could help in some small way. I wanted to call back and talk to you about how everything had been, what I did and saw and felt. I wanted to lie in bed, in the middle of a crazy street where everything was winding down, the bus-boys from the restaurant below taking out the trash, speaking in heavily accented Italian, the larger than life characters outside hunkering down and going home, I wanted to lie there in my own small part of the world and listen to you talking.

We would have spoken about SB’s visit and how I felt about her, about the street festival I saw this weekend, the things I bought, the horrible movie I saw, new music I found, your feelings for this new person, about how things never turn out how you hope but they do turn out for the unexpected. I would have told you about how my week is shaping up, how I am hoping to travel in Europe. I would have wanted to tell you the truth…that all I wanted to do was speak to you forever and forget everything else in the world

And it is in that wanting that I would have found myself lost and confused again. So I accepted the inevitable heartbreak , turned off the phone and fell into a dreamless, humid sleep.