one morning in September, i walked from my brick shotgun 1 bedroom apartment (with the old school black and white tiled bathroom hung with blue lights), to the Straw Ibis coffeehouse (then the only independent coffeehouse in Logan, Utah).
When i walked up to the counter to order, the barista handed me a cappucino, and said someone had already paid, and i insisted they had mistaken me for someone else.
I found him in the back room
smiling at me over his cup
having driven through the night
to surprise me in the morning.
without warning,
mind you.
the sort of surprise that lets you feel the open space
around your throbbing heart
exhilarating
terrifying
gravity
we walked to the farmers market
where we bought a loaf of bread
dizzy and drunk on each other
with the Wasatch Mountains leaning into the autumn sky overhead
and i dared to think i might live this way
loved by someone who would drive 890 miles through the night
to surprise me for coffee
and who promised he would never
let me hide from myself
it is seven years on now,
and just now he surprised me again
2005 style
We don’t touch this gravity
quite so often anymore
i head to work as he comes home, most days
we are bleary eyed after my late nights waitressing
and 3 am wakeups with the babe
and his early mornings headed to work
and worried about money
and the car
and behind on housework
and not sure how we’ll pull it all off,
except for that we take turns being confident there’s a way
and every now and then
one of us remembers to take it back to 2005
and we are Right Here again,
astonished
teary eyed
and grateful enough
to go on for years.
