You said you had another call.  “I’ll call you right back.  I have to take this.”  I knew it was work.  “Fifteen minutes” you said, but by then, my make up was off, my sweats were on, and I was under the covers waiting, phone in hand.  I q-tipped the receiver.  Before long, you phoned.  Linus was barking.  “Hold on,” I instructed, “someone is at the door.”  Someone was you, on your phone with a smile and ice cream, knowing the whole time you’d be here.  There never was work, only your desire to be with me.  I knew I loved you then because I never had to ask.  You just knew. 

In high school, after some melodramatic, Fine! fight that ended in the slam of a receiver, I sat in my dark bedroom, lit dimly by the orange street lamps, and imagined each car I heard approaching would steady and roll into my parent’s pebble driveway.  He never came, but I’d always hoped it was him.  I hated awaking to the 7:09 am alarm to actualized disappointment.  A phone call would apologize and mend, but deep down, nothing was going to replace the surprise, the unexpected, he could never give me.  He wasn’t for me because he didn’t know, couldn’t read my crazy mind. 

I haven’t changed all that much since then.  I’m the same girl, listening to the hallways, with hope in the romantic, in the every night, in the us.  It’s the warm milk memories that never make sense that somehow always do.  It’s getting up in the middle of the night and looking, without knowing what you’re looking for. There aren’t any answers, but there are, and your body is looking for them, searching through papers and drawers, between sweaters, looking for some answer, some insight you miss in the normal upright hours between lattes and calendar items.  I want the unexpected, a crazy straw, and cheesecake in the middle of the night off fingers.  Again.  I want middle of the night, never makes sense the next day.  I want linger and nonsense.