It's 2:14 and the air conditioner hum is doing nothing,
just turning air I didn't notice before I heard your voice minutes before it stopped,
and I can tell you the exact lie of the November stain
hanging above my head about regretting not seeing you — I've had that long to learn it, turn it into a melody.
The phone's been off on the nightstand for eight months now,
one call in, and I already can't wait for the next.
Back when I told you I was flying out,
back when November still had a shape I could barely stand inside, barely breathe through —
I was so messed up, but I swear I wanted to leave.
I said I'd land in Portland on the second,
said I'd rent a car and drive the coast road to your trailer house,
the one that's secluded, away from it all — and what I mean is,
stuck in Ohio, night after night, sleeping my dreams into nothing.
You called it the one place that made you believe in staying somewhere,
something I never felt for a single day I can remember being myself.
I promised with a voice that sounded sure,
hiding doubts and fears behind the confidence you'd hear —
every night on the phone, talking each other peacefully to sleep,
the way a man's supposed to sound when he's already decided not to go.


I don't remember what I told you instead.
I think I just went quiet, the way I run from everything.
Something about my mother. Something about work.
A lie built out of smaller true things, built on years of doubt
circling the inside of my mouth, trying to keep it shut before it said too much.
Each day stacked up like bills past due, closing in on the date I was supposed to see you,
until it wasn't mail anymore — it was the keys, the luggage, the door, a ticket,
money wasted telling myself I was afraid to go alone,
when really I didn't know. I just didn't know.
You said okay. You said maybe next time.
And I heard next time close like a door in another apartment —
soft, but final, evicting me from all communion with you,
in the version of the night where you were finally listening to what my childish fear could say to your face.
I just didn't want the calls to end that way.
So I stayed. I stayed in the place I despise and hate,
which isn't rest, it's just refusing to live,
counting the cars that pass on Market Street after midnight,
guessing which ones were going somewhere,
guessing who made the decision I couldn't bear to.
Something in the stretch from twenty-seven to thirty-six
took my confidence and left the fear behind instead.
I became a man who knew the schedule of a street he didn't live on,
watching your place from a satellite view,
imagining what it'd be like to be next to you.
I became a man who knew the sound of his own regret
better than he knew the pulse in his own veins.


November left. December came in like weather everybody hates.
I kept the coat by the door I never wore to Oregon that day,
kept the coffee mug you'd have used, still in the cupboard —
one for me, one for you,
clean, unused, a kind of shrine to a trip,
making me fantasize like I hadn't completely wrecked what we had.
It only ever existed in a sentence I said out loud once,
then spent a season trying to unsay in my head.
I thought about calling. Thought about it the way you think about jumping into cold water —
the thinking is its own kind of standing on the edge.
But you deserve more than me. So does everybody.
Some nights I got as far as your name on the screen,
my thumb over it like a held match,
and then I'd put the phone back down
and let the dark do what the dark does best —
add another sleepless weight to what I was already carrying.


And then the phone rings.
Not in the afternoon, not at a decent hour,
but at 2:14, the exact minute I'd been staring at for weeks,
like something finally got tired of watching me refuse to move
and decided to hand me something good instead.
I let it ring twice. I don't know why.
I was scared to pick up, because I loved you, and I don't know why
some reluctant part of me still doesn't believe good things happen to someone like me,
still thinks I haven't earned them —
let's be honest, I haven't earned much of anything in this life.
But I picked it up, and it was your voice,
and you didn't ask about November,
didn't ask why the coast road never got a second date,
you just said hey, like no time had passed at all,
like the line between us had only been resting,
knowing it was all my fault, and still — you know me that well.
Even across the country, I felt more connected to you than to anyone standing right next to me.


I laid there in the dark with the phone against my ear
like it was a hand on the back of my neck,
and I listened to you talk about nothing —
your dog, a leak in the kitchen, a book you never finished —
and somewhere in the middle of that nothing
I stopped counting the cars, stopped counting the people who made the trip and didn't go my way instead.
Relief came in when your voice did.
The fan was just a fan again —
not a clock, not a countdown, not a way to measure how far I'd failed.
I wanted to tell you I was sorry.
I wanted to tell you Oregon's still out there —
the beach, the woods, the fog you talked about,
still waiting on someone who isn't scared to arrive.
But I didn't say any of that.
I just said, I'm glad you called —
and let that be the whole apology,
let that be the whole beginning.


The fan keeps turning. The mug's still in the cupboard.
But the room doesn't feel like a room I'm trapped in anymore —
it's just a room, 2:14 in the morning, an ordinary night
for the first time in a decade of my life,
your voice still warm somewhere in the wires,
held close like you're laying right beside me.
And for once I'm not bracing for tomorrow —
I'm just waiting to hear you talk again,
to spend the hours of my aimless days
inside the sound of your voice, smiling something into my ear.