I Drove Past His Apartment on a Tuesday (Mania)

Lyrics

Tuesday.
Nine forty-seven.
The rain stopped an hour ago.
The streetlamp across from 3B is flickering again.
A sick yellow pulse on the wet asphalt.
Your blinds are drawn, but not quite closed.
Just a slit. A message, maybe.
I logged it in the notebook on the passenger seat.
Page forty-two.
"Tuesday, 9:48 PM. Venetian blind angled, 15 degrees."
A new variable in the equation.
This is my fieldwork.
And I drove past his apartment on a Tuesday.
The engine a low hum, my heart a higher one.
This isn't wanting. This is cartography.
Mapping the coast of a world I can't land on.
Just one more time.
One more look at the brick and the glass.
The car smells like old coffee and gasoline.
My phone screen is a blue ghost on my face.
At three AM I was an archaeologist of your old photos.
Digging for a clue in the way you held a beer in 2017.
Helen Fisher says love is an addiction.
She should see my passenger seat.
The crumpled receipts, the empty cups. The evidence.
And I drove past his apartment on a Tuesday.
The engine a low hum, my heart a higher one.
This isn't wanting. This is cartography.
Mapping the coast of a world I can't land on.
Just one more time.
One more look at the brick and the glass.
The gas light has been on since Sunday.
The ficus in my living room has dropped all its leaves.
There are bills on the counter with red letters.
I think I missed a dentist appointment.
These things feel... distant.
Like reports from another country.
A country where people sleep.
Okay. One more time.
The light just flickered in the kitchen.
That means something.
It has to.
Tuesday.
Ten-oh-three.