Can We Talk?

Three words on your phone. Can we talk. No smiley. No full stop. You read it once. Then you read it four more times, in case you missed something.

It's probably nothing. They'll explain tonight. Until then, you just carry on with your day. That's the plan.

By lunch, you know what it's about. By three, you know it's worse than that. You've written their part and your part. You've lost the argument twice. You've even apologized, just in case.

You're very thorough. Thirty-seven versions by dinner. Some with shouting. One with a suitcase. Not one of them has actually happened. And your dinner is cold.

And you call that being prepared. But you're not afraid of what they'll say. You're afraid of not knowing. A mind hates an empty space, so it fills it with the worst. It's trying to protect you. It's just very bad at it.

There's exactly one thing that cloud can't survive. Not more thinking. Not a better guess. And it fits in two words.

The answer comes back. One line. Maybe it's good. Maybe it isn't. But it's one. And one real sentence is lighter than thirty-seven imagined ones. You can stand on a real sentence. You can answer it.

You can't think your way to the answer. You can only ask for it. It takes ten seconds and a bit of courage, and it gives you your day back. What are you still writing versions of?