2:12 am

crawl into bed and the phone rings almost instantaneously. panic first. scan my memory for the pattern of the keypad. click the triangle that in the daylight hours is blue. still fully awake. every other noise obliterated by the sound of my heart. beating. and i can’t make out the voice on the other end. finally realize it’s tone. we’ve not spoken in years. i’ve moved and changed my numbers at least five times since then. and he had been living out of his car. listen to him talk as i drag to the office. curl up in the desk chair and use the toes on my right foot to press against the edge. rock back and forth. we don’t acknowledge that it’s the middle of the night or that we’ve not heard from one another in ages. mostly i don’t need to say a thing. he tells me the latest stories, and i long to write them down. to see the amazing pictures i know he’s taken. his fantastic ability to capture the world from the other end of a lens. he’s just flown in from prague. but mostly he wants to talk about vietnam, cambodia, laos. filled my head with dreams. fly to california he said when i could see the sun warming up my part of the world, it’d be amazing to see you.