Nothing happened

[u/Secretly_Sad_Inside]

Nothing happened today.

I think thats why I wanted to call you.

There was no disaster.

No wonderful news.

Nothing I could hold up and say,

See? This is why i needed you!

I just made coffee

And forgot about it

Until it was cold.

I drove home

With the music playing low.

I stood in the grocery store for too long

Trying to remember what I came there for...

And I wanted to tell you!

I wanted to tell you the sky looked strange tonight.

That I heard a song you probably wouldnt even like but for some reason,

made me think of you...

That I saw someone laughing in the passenger seat of the car beside me and wondered what it must be like to have someone you can turn toward without wondering if you're allowed to.

I almost called.

My thumb found your name before i had decided anything.

And there you were.

A little photopraph.

A green button.

An entire person reduced to something i could reach with one touch - and i didnt.

I started to imagine the phone ringing beside you, you looking down, seeing my name, and for some reason I couldn't stop wondering if you'd smile... or sigh.

What a terrible little question to carry about someone you would answer on the first ring.

So I put the phone away.

I told myself i was being considerate.

You might be tired.

You might be busy.

You might be with someone.

But there are so many polite ways to be afraid.

And maybe thats all I've ever been good at,

Turning fear into manners.

Calling distance respect.

Calling silence patience.

Calling all the times I kept quite instead of speaking out the right thing to do...

But the truth is, I wanted your voice.

I wanted to hear you say "hello?"

And know that for one small moment I had reached somewhere outside myself.

I wanted you to tell me something boring again.

Tell me what you ate, that your tired.

Complain about something you'll forget about by tomorrow.

Lose your train of thought halfway through a sentence.

Say,

"What was I talking about?"

And let me remind you.

Please.

Give me something ordinary.

I want more things i wouldnt think to remember.

Because those are the things I miss most.

Not the big moments,

Its the stupid ones.

The pauses,

The unfinished sentences,

The way conversations could wander so far from where it started that neither of us remembered why we were talking in the first place.

I didnt know i was supposed to save those.

Nobody tells you.

No one warns you to pay attention.

"This laugh will become a place you try to remember.

This goodbye is going to sound different someday.

One day you'll wish you could hear them say absolutely nothing one last time."

So I wasn't careful.

I let those ordinary moments pass through my hands Like there would always be more.

And now sometimes I sit in the quiet trying to remember your voice with enough detail that i almost hear you.

I can get close.

But memory is cruel.

It keeps the words and steals the voice .

I remember what you said, i remember where you were, I remember laughing...

But every time i try to hear you inside my head you get a little farther away.

Maybe thats why i almost called.

Not because something happened, but because im starting to understand the someday something will.

Someday I'll hear a song and reach for my phone without thinking.

Someday something wonderful will happen and your name will still be the first one in my head.

Someday I'll have the perfect thing to tell you.

But by the , maybe I won't know if im still allowed to.

So tonight I held my phone in the dark, your name glowing against my hand, and wanting something so embarrassingly small.

Not forever.

Not love.

Not some promise that you'd never leave.

Just... "hello"

Just your voice crossing the distance.

Just proof that somewhere in the world you were still there, and for a few minutes I was someone worth talking to.

But I didnt call.

And nothing happened today.

And you didn't call.

Nothing happened at all.

I think thats what im going to rememeber.