Enough with the promising.

I'm dancing right around the edge of a piece I want to write--a critical piece, I mean; a piece for work--and that fact has me a little short on words here tonight. Which means that yet again I've told you I'll tell you a story, and yet again I'm not going to tell you one.

Tomorrow night, I will definitely not tell you stories.

I certainly won't tell you about bowling. Or about the big-bodied steam of a faceful of espresso in the morning. Or about writing. Or about the new lamp that has changed my living room. Nope. I won't even tell you about how, upon coming home from my excellent friends' house this evening, I saw the stars over my house, Orion a colossus astride my garage, and thought, as clearly as it was cold outside: I'd have thought you'd be here by now. I didn't think I'd still be seeing these stars by myself. Such a thing to find oneself thinking, in the driveway, in the starlit chill--that is, on a night that finally feels like winter, with the snow glittering on the paving stones.

Oh, may the words be where I am tomorrow, so many words that I almost have a hard time keeping up. They're all there, but they're all there, not here. And no matter how many circles I turn here, I don't get there unless I reach and pull in one direction for a sustained amount of time.

Which leaves me, for tonight, saying: I'd have thought you'd be here by now. You don't know how much you're being missed, how much you are wanted. You have no idea, just none at all.