I am wide awake. The bus cruises towards the open night. I recall the last month, the last week. I have spent more time on the road than in your arms. This does not sit well with me, but I have nowhere to keep these feelings; the plastic magazine pocket behind the seat in front of me is broken beyond repair, and my pockets are full.
The memory of your face and sleep have raced each other inch to inch for the past few hours, and you have won with the widest margin possible, for sleep is nowhere to be found, and all I can see right now is your face, and all I have managed to do so far is miss you, terribly so, with the helplessness of a child who drops his cone of ice cream on the pavement on a hot summer day.
It has not gone how I had imagined. For all my bold claims, the book I ought to write remains unwritten, but I have seen a city or two or plenty, and I have missed you in every one of them. No, it has not been a far cry from it all. In another year, this would have bothered me beyond repair; this failure would have overstayed its welcome. But it is barely a problem. At most, it is an inconvenience.
I sit here tonight in my delirium of exhaustion, and I wonder if another four days will break my back, if I can take them on and find my way back to you, into quiet mornings of soft nothings, of sunlight falling on white sheets, of everything I thought I will never live to see. I sit here tonight, sleepless, and I wonder if I will do it all again, this month, these years, all of it, if I have it in me to live again, pledge my allegiance to hope again, be brave again.
Yes, if it ends in your arms, yes.