The Phone Call...

Eyelids closed with slumber dancing about my brain, I can taste the early morning crispness on the tip of my tongue as I breathe slowly with steady deliberation. 

A sound is pulling me from the comfortable happiness which is ever so close to being within my grasp. Is it your voice calling to me across the miles? That silly, made-up, love song you once sang to me in distant lands? No. It's an odd sort of Ringing. Only Ringing. Louder and louder, the sound grows increasingly closer until I am sat up full on my bed completely disoriented and lost from my aching dream-state of you. 

"Hello..."

My voice is husky with sleep and I lie as you ask if you've woken me. (Your voice is heaven.) I'm not certain why I pretend, but is seems appropriate and you never question my falseness. (I can hear every fleck of you trying to break through the receiver.) Perhaps you love the sound of my waking slowness as I fumble for thought getting hopelessly lost along the way? (There is music in every sound you utter. I smile just hearing you breathe again.) 

We somehow feel like secret lovers whispering in the predawn moments. Something magical overtakes our every word and you manage to find yourself lost in my whimsy... I will never understand why you fancy my nonsense, but I cherish the fact you do. 

We've known one another forever and a day, we hold no secrets. And yet, you insist I constantly surprise and amaze you, how can that be? 

You are my dearest heart, and I listen to your laugh remembering and wondering... At any rate, it's too late for that game now, instead we remain trapped in the lost memories of hidden 3am phone calls from our decades past... 

Shhhhhhhh!

Suddenly I wake to find I've only been chatting to a shadow of the man I once knew and a tear gently slides the contour of my cheekbone as I curl back beneath the quilts hoping your apparition stays until the dawn. Please stay...

My eyelids slowly close, my breathing deepens into the rhythmic pattern of dreaming, and I relax into a happier state of peace as I feel your arms embrace me atop that faraway hotel in our foreign land. We look toward snow-capped mountains heavily dressed with fog and the golden orange rays of a Mediterranean Sunrise. I can smell the light scent of cigarettes and gin on your lips and my heart beats a little quicker as you hold me closer, smile in my ear, and whisper, "always..." 

And this time, this time I believe you.