"I reach home.."

You say 'I reach home now... " and in this most recent ritual of adhoc late night phone conversations.. I reply with 'Good night' instead of 'I love you' or any such inappropriate adulterous thing.

I am curious as to why after restraining orders and other ways of pushing away, and marriage.. why this new ritual and it cannot just be that you will choose from a list of people to keep you company on the phone as you go home late.

Maybe it is .. and part of me is finding it funny that I still have some use as a great conversationalist ; and that there is no fiction like this.

Late night and we are both kind of tired. There is safety no doubt in that people can hear your side of the conversation. And so no more intimate talk or personal talk.. there is politics, and coffee and cocoa plants and work and religion which I tried never to talk to you about before.   It is late night and I could keep a conversation flowing .. and try to fill the silences with politics and coffee and cocoa plants and work and religion. 


I know if I ask why.. the calls will stop.  I know if I ask if everything is okay.. there will be an argument and the calls will stop. I know that each call though seems to be erased from your memory and that if I try to ask 'do you remember when'.. the calls will stop.


Each call does stop though, end, disappears when you reach home.  And I hang up, and wonder, and congratulate myself that it all went well and that you did not hang up before you reached home and that we did not commit adultery.

 Home, where your heart is of course.