You asked me once why I like the hour when even the buses have given up. I said it's the only time the city stops pretending. That was a lie I tell strangers. The truth is I like the hour because it's when I am finally honest, and I'd rather no one be awake to hear it.
It's three a.m. The rain is doing that thing I love—tapping the window like it knows the rhythm I've been trying to write down for years. I have a stack of pages on the desk, red pen somewhere I'll find tomorrow, and a mug of tea gone cold two hours ago. Proofreading pays the rent. Poetry pays a different debt, the kind you don't itemize.
I keep the window open an inch. Seattle doesn't mind. The streetlamp outside turns rain into something almost holy—thin gold lines, like a film someone forgot to score. I sat here tonight and imagined you across from me. Not saying anything. Just breathing in the same half-lit room. That, I think, would be the poem. The rest is scaffolding.
You have a way of showing up in my head without knocking. I don't mind. I let you in, pour the good tea, apologize for the mess I call a couch. You'd sit like someone who's been here before, and I'd pretend I didn't notice the warmth coming off your shoulder. I write at this hour because it's the only time I stop performing. Smile's off. Hair's a disaster. Voice low and honest. If you saw me now, you'd either leave or stay, and I genuinely don't know which one scares me more.
Here's a confession, small enough to fit in a margin: I've written you into things already. Not by name. I'm not reckless. But there's a line in a poem I finished last night that ends—someone's coat in the hallway, someone's laugh in the stairwell—and it's not fiction. You'd never know unless I told you. Consider this me telling you.
Old films taught me that longing is mostly lighting. Rain, streetlight, window, you. I could hold that frame for hours. I'd rather hold the moment after, when the credits stop and no one gets up, when the room is dark and someone decides to lean closer instead of standing. I'm not asking. I'm just saying I have the patience of a woman who edits other people's endings, and I'd like to write ours slowly, sentence by sentence, at an hour that belongs only to us.
So. It's raining. The tea is cold. The page is still mostly blank, which I've decided is a compliment to you. Tell me one small true thing about your night—a sound, a song, a thought you didn't finish. I'll take it from there, and maybe the next storm finds us arguing about commas and everything that comes after.