YOU greet me with coffee this morning: cream and two sugars (just the way I like).
I think YOU did this on purpose, but I hate questioning nice things.
Before I left last night, we fought again. It was my fault though. Or was it yours?
YOU confronted me with your desk-reception lungs that heaved like a dusty accordion, so I took the blame.
It was getting late, almost midnight to be exact, and I was tired. No. I wasn’t tired. I was mad at YOU.
I told YOU I was tired because I hate seeing YOU cry.
I am so accustomed to shoving my feelings under the rug that I stopped feeling.
Before coffee, I texted him:
“I don’t know how to feel.”
“Feel the way you feel.”
You’re smiling at me right now and highlighting specific weeks in your planner: pink, yellow, green, pink again. YOU make the school year seem so colorful in the morning yet; the only colors I’m used to are red, black and blue.
Red marks blotched beneath your eyes last night like misplaced blush.
Your eyes were blue buoys in a rainstorm, a rainstorm that didn’t halt until I grabbed your hands.
You wouldn’t stop pressing your nails down. There were marks along your palms.
No. No. No.
You’d stretch open your hands, reveal the small mail slots, and insert your envelope nails.
I don’t know how much of a rock I am to you.
You lay back, gradual and slow like a drawbridge; your head was in my lap, mail slots were empty.
But I was trying to not sink.
YOU look up from your planner, “how’s the coffee?”
I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in three days. “Great. Thank you.” I miss sleeping so much. With a lack of sleep there comes a lack of responsibility. I choose to stay up late with you. I choose to go to bed around two or three.
If I didn’t, I’d feel like an asshole.
YOU smile and grab the yellow highlighter.
YOU love me this way. YOU feed off how guilty I am.
I reach for my wallet. “You want anything?”
Your eyes are on me. YOU smirk at me and continue to scribble in your planner. YOU put down the yellow highlighter and reach for the pink one before tilting your focus back down to the planner and shake your head.
YOU love making me wait.
My cell vibrates. He’s sailing by and I’m ready to hold up my S.O.S message.
“How was your night?”
He already knows how crazy YOU make me. YOU drive me into a wall, push me up to the ceiling and I never want to come down. But YOU don’t know that. Or maybe YOU do.
YOU retrieve a pen from your backpack and write my name down for today’s date.
“You look so tired,” YOU say. “You can nap at my place after classes.”
Now I get it. This coffee is a peace offering. It’s almost noon and I already know that twelve hours from now, I’ll be on your bed, having a tug-a-war over some simple misunderstanding, because I just want to go to bed.
“That sounds great.”
Last night YOU told me I could leave at anytime.
At this point, I felt like my time was yours.
The hands of time were pocketed and day was merely an extension of night.