What a real reply would have to contain

Decide the standard before the notification arrives. After it arrives, your standards will bargain. They will call a single warm sentence a beginning, because the body has been waiting and waiting feels like it deserves a prize. Write the standard on paper while the phone is in another room. A real reply has to touch the thing you asked. It has to include a next step you could put on a calendar, or an honest no. Warmth alone is a mood. You have been living on moods.

People say actions speak louder than words and then accept a paragraph of words as the action. A reply can be an action if it changes the next day: a time, a responsibility he names, a repair he starts. If tomorrow looks like yesterday, the reply was literature. You are allowed to be moved by literature. You are not required to move house into it.

The bargain you can see coming

When his name appears, you will want to lower the bar so the moment can count as hope. Name the bargain in advance. I will call a compliment a plan. I will hear I miss you as I am coming back. I will ignore the missing answer because the tone was kind. If you can see the bargain, you can decline it in the first hour, which is the only hour it is cheap to decline. By the third hour you will have built a story, and stories defend themselves.

What does not have to be in it

A real reply does not have to be poetic. It does not have to review the whole relationship. It does not have to match the length of your hurt. Short is fine if it is specific. Long is not fine if it is fog. Too little, too late is a harsh phrase, and sometimes it is simply accurate. Late can still be real if the content has changed. Little, with no change, is a souvenir.

Love is an action, never simply a feeling.

bell hooks

hooks was tired of a culture that used the word love for feelings that never became care. A reply is a small stage where you can test the word. Did care show up as a deed, or only as a temperature? Temperature is pleasant. It does not keep a promise.

The standard, in four lines

• It answers the question I actually asked.
• It names a time, or it names a no.
• It does not ask me to pretend the silence did not happen, unless I choose to set it down.
• If it fails these, I do not promote it to a comeback in order to feel relief tonight.

Bring the paper, not the highlight

In a reading, read the standard first, then the reply, if a reply exists. Ask where they match and where you would have to squint. Squinting is the bargain. You can love him and still refuse to squint. The refusal is not bitterness. It is how you keep your own word to yourself.