they changed without telling me, like everyone does

An hour open, the coffee shop draws the tired and cold, a lonely mecca visited for moments by most of its followers. It has no drive-in; I passed a coffee shop with one on my walk, finding myself wondering when churches would offer those, their world bowing down before the altar of convenience.

Her arrival devours my morbidity, destroys the darkness the coffee isn't touching. I fear she has seen me scanning the door hungrily but she is laughing at someone on the phone, wedding band on her ring finger, face-paint of makeup on. Have they made up? When? How much of their lives do I miss?

She waits in line, talking about children and bill payments. I wait for something real.

outside before the break of dawn

I leave before anyone else wakes up. In my head, this is me: one of the night people, as they slip away at dawn into secret places, pull curtains over windows to sleep until another dusk. Prostitutes and police officers, workers of all kinds, living in the dark instead of day: it almost becomes a poem, almost heroic.

If she was awake, we would have to talk. About hair. Bills. Pills. The college fund. I'm not a night person, not holding back the dark. Not embracing it. I'm a coward, running.

The coffee shop is not open yet, but my feet pull me that way. Maybe he will be there, or she will. Or someone new. A story I can piece together and make wonderful, as if theirs were not as fractured as my own.

No one runs forever, a voice whispers in my head. I think it could be mine.

we are together in how far apart we are

We sleep in separate beds. On the tv, it's a sign of wealth.

"Never have so few owed so much to so many," a voice says over the tv. I wonder if it's one of our creditors.

I want to tell her, "It's not your fault."
I want to say, "I've been distracted. There is this couple at a coffee shop. I think they're us."

But who isn't us, she'd say, dismissing it with cold logic, waving another bill. I've burned through the savings for the kid's college fund, the new car, everything. People don't want 9 to 5, they want Workers. Above and beyond the call of duty, but they won't pay for it. I think I am too honest in interviews. I don't want work to be my life.

I knock on her door, soft. "When I die, I don't want my tombstone to be how much I increased productivity on Line 7," I say.
She doesn't ask what I mean; I take that as a hope. "You have to be able to afford to have one." Shadows gather under her eyes, grey threading into her hair like spider webs.

She's stopped dyeing her hair. I have nothing to say to that. I open my mouth, close it, and leave.

home is where the heartache is

The dog doesn't wag her tail when I open the door, and all I feel is relief: if she'd barked, growled, treated me as a stranger -- but she does not, just looks puzzled. Waits for a biscuit while I don't remove my shoes. The mirror of the vanity beside the door is uncleaned, a stack of bills sits on it: all red and yellow primaries, final warnings.
"Where have you been?" she says, too tired to not be calm, so empty she almost cares.
"Work," I say.
"Did you bring home money?"
I think of her, and him, and coffee, try to frame epiphanies into dollar amounts, settle on, "No."
She barely looks disappointed this time.

I think of her waiting at the coffee shop, of the man coming in. I wonder if I'm both of them.
"You're smiling," she says, "are you having an affair again?"
"I never, and no." I head up to shower, alone.

wandering in search of something to name

I've stopped buying coffee at the shop; the staff all know me now and I don't want to be a regular, a friendly face.  It's stigmata, in a city, when we all move here to be alone. But I find myself prowling the streets looking for her, for him. Alone, with each other, with other people. I'm living my life waiting for a frisson sparking from their secret lives they think no one has noticed.

I think my family is worried.

the feeling that the feeling you have isn't real

People have entertainment budgets; I have 'discretionary spending'. The USA spends it on wars; I buy coffee at the one local place.

Decaf only; jitters just once.

He comes in some days, late. Tired and thin. Lost. Staring at the table she usually sits at. Is he who she was waiting for? I haven't asked. He doesn't return my smiles either, but I have fewer of them than I used to.

time and slippage

Somehow, I am here when she arrives. Not every day -- the world is too messy for that, but sometimes. She keeps her phone off now, watch gripped in one hand. Her nails are bitten to the quick and she stares at the door, waiting, in defiance.

Whoever she is waiting for never comes in.

She has stopped returning my smiles.

Cell phones and watches

She puts the phone away, studies her watch, face set in hard lines and then studies the door and windows, eyes narrowing. Her lower lip trembles, just for a moment, but her eyes are dry and the moment passes as she stands.

I want to say something, but I don't know what.

She raises her left hand to her right, running her fingers over a thin band on her ring finger, right hand shoving into her pocket as she checks the watch on her left hand again and walks past me, out the door.

All I can think to ask is why she has a watch and a cell phone. I hold it in.

Cell phones and tea

She has been staring at her cell phone for over half an hour, her tea cold water filled with flecks of colour, lips pressed together.

I wish I knew her number, so I could call her, so the phone would ring.

But I don't know what I'd say.