Hours Between

Four hours, four cups of cold coffee, four songs I barely know,

maps creased with tired fingers, tracing roads that stretch too slow.

I hear her voicemail again—soft, tired—distant as the dusk,

her voice a faded thread pulled tight through miles of rust.

Every hour between is a breath I can’t quite hold,

stretched thin like taffy, sticky with stories never told.

The distance is not just the road or the miles I keep,

it’s the hours folded like a note I’m afraid to read.

I drive and count the spaces where silence settles in,

between my empty apartment and the house she’s waiting in.