The dogs thought
    it was a perfect night.

Coal and Orca under the table,
     burger paid out
     in the official currency
     of love and begging,
        fresh water,
        patio air,
        every available hand stopping by
        to confirm the obvious:

        yes,
        good dogs,
        excellent dogs,
        dogs operating
        at an extremely high level.

They played,
     worked the crowd,
     took their loves seriously.

They even met Moose—
     a pretty four-year-old golden
     with the kind of face
     that makes everybody

     temporarily better behaved.

So no, it wasn’t a bad night,
                 far from it.

For a long while,
    it was almost the opposite:

    you beside me,
    dogs at our feet,
    Irby’s all around us,
    and that rare, easy gravity

    of having nowhere better to be.

I think that’s what I wanted
          to leave untouched.

Not the calendar,
    the trip,
    ten days standing in the doorway

    with its hand already on the knob.

Just that:
     us,
     the patio,
     the dogs,
     the night behaving itself

     better than nights usually do.

The leaving was already there…
    quiet as a suitcase in the other room,
          as Nero waiting for the long way west,

             the word I kept not putting in the middle of us.

I told myself I wasn’t hiding it,
              and maybe I wasn’t.

Not exactly.

I just didn’t mention it this week,
       didn’t remind you,
       didn’t want one more good night
       to have to carry

       what today was already going to carry.

Which is a very decorated way to admit
      I left you alone with it at the end.

Near closing,
     I finally gave the leaving
     its word: tomorrow.

As in: I leave tomorrow.

As in: Today.

As in:
      the thing I didn’t want to think about
      had been thinking about us
      the whole time.

The word changed the air.

Your face went sad first,
        of course it did.

Then anger came up behind it,
     fast,
     armored,
     familiar in the way hurt gets
     when it has to defend itself

     before it has a chance to be held.

So I got the earful.

I'd earned enough of it
    that arguing would’ve been
    just another way to miss the point.

Then a measured goodbye,
        your drive home,
    the screenful after.

Charged messages
        glowing with everything
        I should’ve helped carry earlier

        instead of letting it all arrive at once.

I understand why it looked bad.

“_I didn’t want to think about leaving_”
    may be true,
    but it doesn’t do the work of

    “_I should’ve told you better_.”

One explains me.
One considers you.

That’s one difference
       I don’t get to cute my way around.

And because apparently
    the night needed
    a smaller working model
    of the same failure,

    you were telling me a story
    when my squirrel-vision brain
    caught the scoreboard:

    13–1, Angels over the Rangers.

Ridiculous score, useless fact.

The kind of thing
    that has absolutely no business
    stepping between your mouth
    and my attention.

There are scores
      and there is attention,
      and only one of those was my job.

My job was your story,
           your face,
           staying where you were
           instead of letting a screen
           steal a little piece of a night

           I already knew I’d be trying to remember.

That’s why both bummers
       taste like the same one.

Not saying enough,
    not listening enough.

Two ways
    to look away
    from the person
    I’m about to miss.

Which makes the baseball part
       almost too on the nose,
        considering Wednesday
          had been kind to us
        in every other column.

After Tuesday’s 0–3,
      our teams swept:

      Braves over Pirates,
      Cardinals over Brewers,
      Dodgers over Rockies.

The Universe gave us one clean scoreboard.

Our teams swept, I didn’t.

So—
    this is where
    the trip actually starts.

Not at the first exit,
    not when Fort Worth
    starts pulling the road

    into its long Texas mouth.

Not in Vegas,
    not at RubyConf,
    not in some hotel room
    where the carpet looks like
    a committee lost an argument
    with a slot machine.

Here, before the first mile.

With me admitting
     I started leaving you
     before I left,

     not because I wanted distance,
     but because I tried
     to keep distance…

     from the distance.

That just doesn’t work.

It just hands you the hard thing
   later,
   sharper,
   with less time
   to hold it together.

So I’m holding it up now.

I leave today.

Ten days:
    Fort Worth,
    Vegas,
    RubyConf,
    Fort Worth again,
    then the long drive back

    to Atlanta next Friday.

There will be miles.

A lot of them.

There will be text.

A lot of it.

From rest stops,
     strange beds,
     airport bars,
     random diners,
     Vegas conference rooms,

     anywhere with a signal.

Probably too much text.

Because you won’t be
        in the passenger seat
        for the usual reaching over.

Because Coal and Orca
        won’t both be working
        the patio under my feet.

Because Irby’s won’t be around us
        doing that Irby’s thing
        where a regular night

        _almost_

        convinces us it can hold forever.

So let this be the first one.

Not a fix,
    not a magic sentence.

Just me saying the thing
         before the road
             gets a vote.

I failed
  to bring the leaving close enough
  for us to hold together.

That was the first mile.

This is me
     turning around
     to walk it with you
     before I drive away.