I scrolled up to find the start of it

I scrolled up to find the start of it.

Four minutes.

The whole decision had taken four minutes

before my name appeared.

Not a question.

A tag: hey, looping you in,

we're doing Saturday.

Three messages, three read receipts,

a conversation that had arrived

at its conclusion

and then remembered I existed.

I typed sounds good.

I typed it fast

because the plan was made,

because the plan is always made

before I'm in the room—

has always been made

before I'm in the room—

and I'm thirty-two.

I still feel the specific lag

of arriving at a table

where everyone has already ordered,

where the waiter is already gone,

where the question was asked

and answered in my absence.

Sounds good.

I put my phone down.

I made coffee.

The thing I've never said out loud:

it's not that I wanted to be asked.

It's that no one thought to wonder

whether I should be asked.

That's the difference.

That's the four minutes.