You duck out of parties to text your significant other.
You unearth your talent for corniness. You mean every word of your dumb texts.
You Skype each other before bedtime, and sometimes fall asleep on webcam.
When people ask you why you do this to yourselves:
Sometimes you don't know how to read silences. Given a blank canvas, your mind paints demons on it.
You buy each other things to hug when you're not together.
You're happy for whole weeks before a planned visit.
You've learned how to budget time on a 7-hour solitary Amtrak ride, how to score the best Megabus seats...
...And memorized the road's scenery, picked your favorite gas stations to eat at, learned every TJ Maxx and used car dealership along the way. You've gone this route so many times.
You've seen endless roadkill, chugged coffee, blinked through endless night drives...
...Scoured Jet Blue for discount flights, figured out that Tuesday after midnight is the best time to buy.
When you meet at an airport or bus station:
You feel like you've known each other for longer than a few days at a time.
Try not to think of how soon you're leaving again.
You don't really know each others' cities. You spend weekends indoors, sleeping at weird hours, cooking elaborate dinners in your underwear.
You get to know a snore, or a clinking in the radiator.
The night before leaving, you know you're selfish for thinking:
And they know it's selfish to say:
The next morning, after the sendoff, you go home to this:
There's never enough time together. And there may never be. Geography sucks, but a weekend here and there is still make it all more than worth it.
And there they are, shrunken back into a phone call, a Skype message, a small computer screen.
