A Little Promise

I never sleep when I am angry. I never sleep when I am sad.

I wake in the cold of the night in the middle of a hot summer and I am thinking about you so intensely I must have been talking in my sleep. You are so far away and yet I can feel you in the room and I wonder for a moment if you too ever wake up in the cold of the night in the middle of a hot summer and talk to me.

All anyone asks me lately is, what do you want. And all they tell me is, follow your heart. Both of these notions feel thin when I wear them, thin against my skin like the moment you start to sweat and your shirt sticks to your back. The heat comes rolling in like waves across black asphalt parking lots. I find myself in places I have been before. I find myself crying in the bathroom.

I keep on thinking things will get easier but little spots show up across my skin to tell me I am still sick in certain ways. The body knows what the mind does not. I tell it hush, I tell it quiet, I tell it I will come home.

I like to think about you out there. It gives me relief to the various ways life gets richer when you hurt. Sometimes I think in that way I am there too, braided into the unknowing and the small flicker of promise that must give you. Everyone tells me there are no mistakes. I am not so sure that is true. And still, I promise myself to tell the truth.