Park Tavern, nine o’clock—
     Mari arrived late enough for a grin,
     early enough for everyone to love her on sight.

Owls, work-friends,
      the easy orbit of a good night
      circling the bar until midnight clicked us onward.

Hotel.
Nightcap.

The sort of snuggle that decides the whole room will sleep better.

Closed my eyes expecting an exit…
                she didn’t leave.

Morning went to a conference badge and a microphone.

She stayed—
    sleeping the kind of sleep
    that makes a room remember how to hush.

Lunch break became a brief return,
                   quiet check-in,
                    longer exhale,

        calendar entry: “cuddles.”

Me: back to the stage.
I assumed the spell would break.

But…

When the last slide dimmed,
      Mari was still there.

Afternoon drifted between family calls—
      funeral logistics in soft voices,
      the grammar of loss rehearsed between sighs—

      my laptop glow,
      a meeting or two insisting the world continue.

Four o’clock brought old habit of departure.

Mari didn’t practice it.

Instead, South City Kitchen with the Owls—
            food like Southern generosity,
                 table talk untying knots.

Irby’s after—
       my detour into trivia,
       won by enough to call it “crushed.”

Mari went to tend the necessary life:
     Coal,
     another long call, (then another, and a third)

     the kind that take a toll.

Late night re-entry:
      two barstools,
       a closed tab,
       the kind of conversation
       that changes altitude without warning

       and never once loses the cabin.

Loews again—
      more of the better silence,
      deeper talk that trusted itself to be said.

3:30 a.m. Mari gathered the promptness she’s known for,
  but only after the goodbye had learned how to linger.

Two days,
    mostly unbroken.

Our longest stretch by far,
    proof that duration is sometimes a feeling,

    not a clock.

Today has its own travel plans.

Mari heads north tomorrow to say goodbye well,
     I keep a promise to watch the dog who keeps her house steady.

We might not see each other tonight.

We might.

Either way, this is the truth I carry out the lobby:
     she stayed when leaving would have been easier,
     and the room,
     once emptied,
     still held the shape of where she’d been—

     another way to say it: still there.

                 …and somehow, so was I.