curfew

My phone rings.
I leave it to announce itself. I'm on the toilet and need to finish. "You can wait", I think. Leave a message, I'll call back.

I finish and run eagerly to check my voicemail, always longing for contact with the world outside my window.

It's my friend on the other side of the planet. The bottom half.
I email him, "I was PEEING!!!".

20 minutes later he phones back.
Ah, to talk with someone you love.
If only that could happen every day.

We muse about our respective romantic comings and goings. He's just finished, I'm hopefully starting.
We talk about work and destiny and war and the complexity of the human condition.

And then he announces the time.
10:40pm.
Not too late I think, even though he is still at the office.

He must run.
Curfew's at 11 and he's 20 minutes from home.

This radical difference in our present environments slices through our conversation and renders this intimate, unified Now into two.

This will not be the last time we talk.
This will not be the last time we talk.
This will not be the last time we talk.

There's power in 3's.