We didn’t get
   the Braves-night sighting.

Which is okay.

Mostly.

You went to the game
    and somehow found
    a couple of F1 people
    in the wild,

    because apparently the Canada GP thread
    was not enough international nonsense for one month.

Then The Battery
     did what The Battery does:

     kept the night open
     longer than anybody
     meant to leave it.

So we texted.

Kept the conversation
     doing its little bright thing.

You there.

Me here.

The thread moving between us
    like it knew neither one of us
    wanted to let go of the day entirely.

Then you got home.

And there it was.

Missing U.

At one in the morning,
          those words
        do not arrive
             politely.

They don’t knock.

They don’t ask whether the timing is reasonable.

They just stand there
          in the room
          holding the exact thing

          both of us already know.

You were
    ten minutes away.

Ten.

Not a flight.

Not a border.

Not a weather delay
    pretending to be fate.

Ten minutes.

Close enough for the body to get stupid with hope.

Close enough
      for the map
      to look less like information

      and more like a dare.

But we know better.

Damn it.

We know better.

Late night
     into early morning
     has never been

     where we do our best work.

Wanting is not the same thing as wisdom.

Missing is not a permission slip.

Ten minutes
    can still be too far

    if the hour is wrong.

So we restrained ourselves.

Which sounds noble
      until you’re the one
      lying there with insomnia

      pacing the room in your head.

I fought it off
   with action movies
        until about three.

Explosions.

Chases.

People making terrible tactical decisions
                              very loudly.

Anything
        to keep my mind
        from driving those ten minutes

        without me.

Then Thursday came in hot.

Not regular Thursday.

Not even close.

A flurry of texts
   before the day
  found its shoes.

More than regular.

More charged.

The kind of morning
    where the thread
    doesn’t just wake up,

    it sits up and starts talking before coffee.

And still,
    the day had
    its own routes
    already drawn.

I’m headed to Fort Worth
    to see Ava for the weekend.

You’re headed
       toward Chicago,
              family,
              grief,
              the aunt…

       leaving a space
       no one knows how to fill.

Valid reasons,
      both of them,

      the kind nobody should argue with.

But valid reasons
    don’t hug back.

They don’t stand
     in the doorway
     with your voice.

They don’t put their arms around me
     and make the whole nervous system

     stop filing reports.

So yes.

I’m enjoying the thread.

I’m grateful for every message.

Every little incoming piece of you
             lighting up my screen.

I’m grateful
    we can be
    this separate

    and still this connected.

And also, I’m counting.

Not gracefully.

Not casually.

The distance
    between now
    and the next hug.

Maybe Monday.

Maybe.

That word again,
     small enough
     to be careful,

     big enough to keep the lights on.

Until then, we have the thread.

The flurry.

The missing.

The good reasons.

The ten minutes
    we _didn’t_ drive.

The ache of knowing restraint
                 can be right
                    and still…

not feel anything like relief.