later on

There's always a moment where a decision is made. For me it happens at the subway and it happens at 2 am, when the train is coming in or my stop is coming up or my ride is going home or I'm too tired to stay awake any longer, and there's a decision to be made. But sometimes it's like there's no time for that. There's never enough time to say what needs to be said.

I want to kiss you. I want to go home with you. I want to stay here with you. Was that so hard? And the decision is made and the night carries everything away.

Later on, a lot of things happen. You make a drunken phone call at four in the morning but it sounds disingenuous. You meet for coffee and you can't help the feeling that she'd have had coffee anyway, with or without you. And, worst of all, when you finally share one of those moments--the ones where if you'd made a different decision weeks or months ago would have been so intimate and so close and so perfect--you instead feel more alone than ever, like it's a glimpse into what could have been but never will be.

Every time your hands touch it's like a farewell or a ghost, and every time you dream of her you wake in a cold sweat, and you have no idea why you find it so terrifying, why you keep drifting apart and find both the inevitable isolation and the idea of intimacy thoughts too terrible to consider.

Except I know why it is now. It's because I chose this. A decision was made. Freedom is a terrible thing.