Loyalty and Logic

If I could just let go 
of the feeling that 
everything would be 
lost -


I do best with decision making between three options. No more, no less.

Pink, green, black.
Mild, moderate, severe.
Wine, beer, cocktail.
Comedy, drama, documentary.
Chocolate, fruit, mint.

It sounds so fucking selfish to say it, but it's true. I have too many alternatives. Too many opportunities. More than three things to choose from.

I've waited nearly two months for a hard offer from the hospital in Atlanta. I've called their bluff on offers for other positions within the company. I've played the game and interviewed with multiple other groups.  (I'm no longer one of those girls who doesn't know what she's worth.) In fact, I'd started to give serious consideration to places I never intended on living. To job titles I never intended on pursuing.

Minneapolis.
West Lafayette?
San Antonio.
Las Vegas?
Australia.
(Tenure?)

Then it came. Then they called my bluff. With a deadline.
The clock ticks in Atlanta.
And now I am back to square one.

Fucking loyalty. Fucking logic. 

Also, I have missed you. 

..

criminal

It was supposed to be a simple reunion -
    two old friends quietly taking solace in the infrequent luxury of being richly understood
    kindred spirits content to walk about in the candor of daytime shadows

How was I to know he would pour his heart out to Laila the night I introduced them?

He's in love with you! she laughed with wide eyes. Like... madly in love. 

What had I done?

Crazy Making

As luck would have it, 

fate was cruel.

Departing like vectors,

their sacraments and separations

parallel

did compose deceptive serendipity

and spurious connections.

_________________________

He practically booked a plane ticket the night I told him what S.B. had done. 

Graveyard

The job was fun. The money was decent.
Life was exciting. This was our time.

After a busy night of emergency duty, I would leave the hospital just after eight. It was all I could do to stay awake on the drive home in notoriously tedious rush hour traffic. He usually left before I got home in the morning. I would be gone before he came home after five. My fourteen hour night shifts and his average daytime schedule meant that we sometimes missed each other for days. But I was a night owl and the best part of a graveyard shift was working only three days a week.

The apartment was quiet. Blackout curtains in the bedroom were drawn closed and the warm, orange glow of the hurricane lamp pooled on my pillow. He had turned down the bed for me before he left. Mellow, barely audible music spread across the room from the tiny radio on the dresser. Even at nine o'clock in the morning, climbing into bed was irresistible. He did this for me.



These days, I try not to dwell on the good parts. They double-cross me. That he could be so attentive and charming through all of the mistakes...
It all becomes my fault.