The Long List

I have a version of every important conversation we never had, rehearsed so many times it has better dialogue than the ones we actually managed. In the imagined version I'm clearer, he's more patient, neither of us reaches for the safety of a joke halfway through. None of it happened. What did happen was smaller, clumsier, mostly about nothing. I used to think the real conversation was the one owed. I think now the small clumsy ones were the real ones, and the eloquent version in my head was never anything but a private comfort.