Tomorrow

I'm sitting here to summon my words. They seem to have existed all along for nothing else but to foretell how tomorrow will unravel... The few seconds where the bus inches from its Chinatown platform, and the wait for the clock to strike four announcing that she's on her way to see me.

In an alter reality, she would pick me up, and we'd drive home together, excited to toss our worries aside. She would spiral into me on a couch, while we watched a movie we were not really watching. There would be silence and caresses. There would be frizzy hair and flushed cheeks because of the heat, and a curious little dog pacing outside the room.

There would be no bus ride back.