Hello it's me

At night I lay in bed and travel. I close my eyes and rearrange the room, imagine I'm at Tall Oaks, tell myself the windows are on the other wall, the closet over there, and I keep my eyes closed until it is real. I go back, back to when I was with her, over her, listening for her. I go back further than that. I can go back to the nights I spent there for no reason other than they wanted me to do so. And then, once completely there in my imagination, I recall and pretend I’ve gone back to a time when I awoke to my father downstairs reading the morning paper, drinking his coffee, enjoying the quiet, back to enjoying that quiet with him, sharing the paper, my own cup of coffee. Hours pass like this. His robe is as completely red as the house is quiet. He’ll begin to make breakfast shortly, corned beef hash and poached eggs, Rye toast. He’ll ask me to bring my mother coffee as he pulls her breakfast-in-bed tray from the cabinet above the refrigerator. She’ll stir and crack an eye at me, only willing to open both fully when she sees the cup of coffee in my hand. Where’s the paper? she’ll groggily ask me. I’ll return with the sports section and then she’ll say Good Morning. And I stop there and carry the moment with me to sleep, a smile on my face, so good to see them again.