6:19 p.m. - 03/27/03
i remember your future, almost.
I'm alive on bated breath all day today for you. I'm counting the minutes, subtracting the time difference, determining, as best I can, where you'll be when. It's silly, somewhat. And not because it's the best way I know to hold onto someone at your distance. I'm imagining your process is like the one I went through, and the hallways are familiar, the ones I knew. I'm trying to push into this foreign, famous hospital all the goodness of my quaint and quiet one. I'm trying to make their rooms into our rooms, their rules into ours, their smiles into mine. I imagine that, when you call me, if you're still going to, you'll do so from the pay phone at the end of the hallway- just outside the office door, less than two yards from the tiny kitchen area. I want to give you the right light and the best time of day, and the best spirits to come into. I want to give you the best collection of girls I can summon, and the best staff to admit you. I want Grace a second time.
McLean. It's such a hard and connotated word. But Rogers Memorial sounded like a hospital to me too, once. It took time and tears and rest for me to see all the kind eyes around me. Oh, Shan. I want to call them up and listen to their accents and decide if they're good enough for you. I want to ask them prying questions and press them to the breaking point and make them reassure me. I want someone on the other end of the line who'll say, "Oh, you were in Oconomowoc? Wow. We do our damndest to do work that good." I'll believe in them, then, maybe. I already believe in you.
But no, the voice I really want on the other end of the phone line is yours. I want the pay phone at the end of the hallway, near the office, to be the one from which I call you. I want to use up all my phone card minutes, listening to the syllables I've never heard pronounced by you. When I hang up, I want the bittersweet pang in my heart that says I love you, and I miss you, and I
know we'll talk again all at once. And then I want to turn around and see smiling, familiar faces ready to pull me into activities, ready to ensure I stay centered in myself, that I never glide into that other girl, the one that still comes so easily, sometimes.
I guess it all comes back to me. But I love her. And that makes it about her, too. Sometimes, it's frightening to be so attached, to think how short a time it's been... I could remember Billy if I chose to, or Anthony. I could compare. Or I could remember Rogers, and know that love does not come in well-timed increments on an installment plan. Sometimes it rushes like a kid into your arms and when it does, I do the same thing I'm doing now. I hang on; baby, hang on.
chord
p.s. I promised a surprise unveiled. So here it is: Come in, and stay awhile.
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