Amelie Gray's Week 8 Entry: These Words

Amelie Gray
Monday






Amelie Gray's Choice: Picture 1

Title: These Words



Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side

Hey There Delilah - Plain White T’s


Is it pathetic that I am so impatient for your words to arrive in my hands?

I open the curtains, checking for the tardy mailman - once, twice. Damn the stupid USPS and their ineffective, unreliable carriers.

I bite my nails down to the skin. The coffee on the table goes cold. I check the phone, for a message from you, a hasty text with cut-off words and half-finished thoughts - anything to know that you still care, that you haven’t forgotten about the girl who sits in her dark, cluttered house and waits for you to come back and bring her the sun.

Two o’ clock slowly ticks away. The clock stares me down coldly, mocking me, still standing there like an idiot.

The street is so silent. There are no neighbors outside to hound, begging to check their piles of flyers and one-time health offers, to see if perhaps there is a letter with my name written on it in your lopsided handwriting - always in a hurry, probably leaning against a nurse’s station or a wall, ignoring the funny looks people give you as they skirt around you, wondering why a doctor with a stethoscope around his neck and an ID pinned on his jacket could be so careless.

That makes me smile.

For a moment, at least.

I wonder what you are doing right now. Are you at the hospital, saving lives, smiling at little children and giving them lollipops, always so kind and professional, Asclepius in scrubs.

It makes me feel inadequate.

You are doing your part for us - for me - and I am pacing up and down the house of the man who keeps me away from you, waiting for just a little bit of you to shine through for me, and cursing you in my impatience.

So I sit down.

That doesn’t help.

My knee jogs up and down against the coffee table. The mug spills over. The flowers jiggle.

And I hear the truck, chugging up to the curb.

I am sure the mailman thinks I am insane. I run like a madman out to the box, snatching the pile of letters and magazines right out from between his fingers.

The majority ends up on the edge of the driveway right there. I will probably remember it, days later, maybe when you finally are able to drive up and see me. We will be sitting in the rocking chair, your arms around me as I rest in your lap - safe, together, happy - and you will see the pile of soggy paper melded together against the stone, and you’ll ask me why I left the mail there.

And I will just smile, and kiss you, and maybe later when we’re wrapped together in bed, I’ll tell you, and you’ll laugh at me.

And I know that somewhere in a hospital, you probably did the same thing.

The letter comes easily to my hand, after the hard hours of waiting, of suffering, of thinking I’ve been tossed aside and forgotten.

There is nothing inside, but on the front are your words, the words I’ve been waiting to read:

The distance is only physical, my love.

I smile and turn to go inside for a sheet of paper.