It's 11pm. I'm sitting in a plastic lawn chair on the dock.
You used to call at this time. For seventeen years, that ring was the last thing I heard before sleep.
On my fiftieth birthday, you called at midnight. You were the only one who remembered the exact minute.
Then it stopped. Not a fight. Just a quiet vanishing.
I'm okay. The lake is beautiful. I bought this chair for three dollars at a yard sale.
I don't need the call anymore. But I still count the seconds until it would come.
No goodbye. Just this.