His Room Is Two Doors Down
his room is two doors down and we've texted since midnight. nothing's happened. that's not the part keeping me up.
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his room is two doors down. i can hear the ice machine he used twenty minutes ago and i know it was him because the text came right after, can't sleep either, a question with an answer built into it. we've been texting since midnight about nothing. the awful slide deck. whether the hotel coffee counts as coffee. normal things, except it's 2am and there's a wall and then a hallway and then a wall between us and i keep noticing the wall.
i'm married. he knows that, it's not a secret, it's right there on my hand and in my photos and i love him, the actual him, asleep at home in our actual bed. and none of that is the part that's keeping me up. the part keeping me up is how easy it is. how light. how a typing bubble can appear and i hold my breath for it like a teenager. nothing's happened. nothing is going to happen. i put the phone face down. it lights up anyway, throws that little glow on the ceiling, and i lie here not reaching for it and feeling exactly how much i want to. that's the thing i'll have to look at in the morning. not what i did. what it cost me not to.
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