To wake up next to you is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you to see you. But I do look. So when you come to me in your opulent sadness, I see you do not want me to unbutton you so I cannot do the one thing I can do. Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase away from me. Already it is years of you a staircase away from me. To be near you and not near you is ordinary. You are ordinary. Still, how many afternoons have I spent peeling blue paint from our porch steps, peering above hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first glimpse of you. How many hours under the overgrown, pink camillas, thinking the color was wrong for you, thinking you’d appear after my next blink. Soon you’ll come down the stairs to tell me something. And I’ll say, okay. Okay. I’ll say it like that, say it just like that, I’ll go on being your never-enough. It’s not the best in you I long for. It’s when you’re noteless, numb at the ends of my fingers, all is all.
