Saved

The Monday bartender greets you with her typical mix of disdain and appreciation, a relationship years in the making that forever teeters between the familiar and the tentative, you take careful steps toward etching yourself into the hardwood floor. Do you remember that bar on 23rd street, those late nights on sawdust floors, those last ritual Budweiser bottles, a whole life wrapped around its quiet existence? I have nothing but gratitude for it now, you know, but I can't go back there without you, can't build another existence from its ashes. New York turns a page with every new life you live and there's no rewind button, the streets look different each time you walk them and isn't that what your impatient heart wanted all along? Careful what you wish for, echoes across your brow but you made this bed, no one else. 

I sleep better than I thought I could. 

Tossing and turning but I wake,
rested.