Sundays
I wonder if we would work now that you drink and I write.
If this way, we could meet each other halfway. Like DC, or Colorado depending on where I am. Or really anywhere where I won’t ask you questions about tomorrow, or next year. You know I’d still go anywhere.
I heard that on Sundays you sit in your backyard with the dog and read. I wonder if you know that I do too. Only sometimes it’s on weeknights or on fire escapes or at cafes where I just keep ordering water with lemon. Sometimes I catch myself unable to concentrate, looking at my phone, wondering if I even want to be there or if I just want you to come across me in the ways that you always wished I was even though you aren’t even looking.
I think about how you’ll be here on a Wednesday and debate if I should, and if so, how slow to walk by the store window to try and catch your eye or if you’ll recognize the dog but not me. I think about seeing your too close together dark brown eyes in person again and if they’d make me whole again. Or at least buy my time, give me six more months of life in the fantasy I’ve crafted where my value is tied to how sad I am over you so I can keep writing.
What do you think they’ll be? The when and the where of when we see each other again. How much time do you think will have passed, how many Sundays of dragging out the folding chair or me forgetting every cafe is cash only. How many pages turned or dog eared or water spilled on my New Yorker making it ripple when it’s dry.
If I walk the right way, just a few minutes early, maybe I’ll miss you. And it will make you miss me. And if you wait until I’ve read four more books, I’ll be strong enough that I won’t want to escape to Florida, or maybe Chicago just because you’ll be in New York. And we can both be here, at the same time, reading and drinking on Sundays, until you just become someone that reminded me to start writing.
This essay is part of my collection “These Are Not About You”. Order it here.
