evening coming-- 

Five o'clock can't come soon enough anymore.  It's not like the old days when there were things to do to occupy time and jokes to tell to sort of speed up the minutes until you and he could stand together in an elevator, with fifteen seconds to breathe each other in, until the ground was hard and cold under your feet again.  And now, when the time comes for you to leave, you take the stairs.  You've never liked feeling weightless alone.  In fact, you've told him this.  But he always thought you were talking about elevators.

Try to make yourself stop watching the clock.  Time doesn't go by any faster when you sit and wait.

the office girl

You like to imagine doing things sometimes, like what if you just got up and walked out, drove to Denver?  San Francisco?  You and he used to talk about things like that, and your ideas and his ideas were always so similar that sometimes it felt like he had his arms around you, his lips on your forehead.  You still imagine driving somewhere far away, and sometimes he's still there, but in your mind you have to go and get him first because he's not standing next to you anymore.  It's not the same though because you never used to actually think you'd be able to do any of these things.  Now sometimes it feels like you can.

Don't let yourself get trapped.  The confines of your desk will do nothing but force you to settle.

unloosing her scarf

For as much as you've dreamed about it, you've never believed it could happen.  But one morning you listen to a song about how this is the first day of [your] life, and you think that maybe it is, and if it's going to be any day, why not today?  And you're still ‘office girl' for right now but when you take the elevator up, you jump a little bit just to feel weightless for a second.  Two seconds.  Five minutes.  Two hours.  Four hours until he's sitting by himself in the kitchen as he does quite often these days, and you still feel alive, no longer choked and stifled.  You tell him that you and he have lots of things to talk about, lots to say, and you brace yourself for no but he really says yes.

Never tie yourself down so tightly that you can't get free.  He can be yours if you decide to be brave.