11:11
ou're the one who told me. Before I didn't know. I remember it so
clearly. We were on the phone and I was still trying, in my desperate
but fatally subdued way, to convince you that you loved me.
Of course, I never came right out and told you that was my intention. No, instead I tried to impress you with my quick wit and biting sense of humor. You'd taken the bait, but I was having trouble reeling you in. This was not the first time you'd been on the line.
We had just taken a funny idea to its logical conclusion; comedy ad absurdium. It was one of the things we did really well together. There weren't as many of those as I would have liked. I suspect you may have had a hand in that.
In any case, we'd reached one of those awkard gaps in the conversation you only seem to get to when you're talking to someone you really care about. With anyone else, you'd just say goodbye and hang up.
I looked at the clock and, just to fill the silence, I said "Hey, it's 4:44!"
"I thought the only one that really means anything is 11:11." you said.
I'd never heard that before, but it made sense. I'd always gotten a tiny thrill when I happened to look at a digital clock that was showing all the same numbers. 11:11 is, of course, the only time when all four numbers are the same.
"Yeah," you said, "at 11:11 you can make a wish."
Had it been 11:11 instead of 4:44 I knew I would have been wishing that you could get over the pain and confusion that were all you had left from your previous, failed relationship. I would have been wishing that you could just let yourself see what a great thing the two of us could have. I would have wished that we could finally stop the flirting and fencing our relationship had devolved into.
You kept fighting it though. You were unwilling to risk your emotional well-being again. You wanted to be friends because being friends is so much safer, but I didn't feel comfortable with that. There was just too much water under our bridge.
I stopped calling you, and eventually you got the hint and stopped calling me. And now it seems like every single day, at least once, I look at a clock and it says 11:11 and I smile a sad little smile and think for a minute about what might have been.
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