The Poem: Making a Friend, Exchanging Numbers, Knowing It Is the Right Decision.

https://authorlibraryoflinguistics.substack.com/subscribe

I am Single. I am Available for a relationship!

The Poem: Making a Friend, Exchanging Numbers, Knowing It Is the Right Decision.

Making a Friend, Exchanging Numbers, Knowing It Is the Right Decision.

We stood where the coffee cooled and the afternoon

had already decided to be ordinary.

You laughed at the same small thing I had been saving

for a quieter moment, the laugh fit the sentence
like a key in a pocket.

I said my name the way people say names

when they want them to be remembered:
slow, with the consonants placed like stepping stones.
You repeated it back, not exactly, and that was enough—
a near‑map of recognition.

There was a pause, the polite kind that measures

how much of yourself you can afford to give.

You fished your phone from the bag as if it were a small animal,

tapped the screen, and the light made a private geography
on your palm. I watched the numbers appear like seeds.

“Here,” you said, and the word was a handing‑over,

not a test. I typed mine into your phone with the same care

I used to write someone’s address on a letter I meant to keep.

We both watched the cursor blink, a tiny metronome

counting the decision into being.

You asked if I wanted to text later; the question

was a bridge with a handrail. I said yes, and the yes
was not a promise so much as a permission:
permission to be seen, permission to be called.

We left the coffee cooler than we had found it,

and the street took us in different directions.
That night I checked my phone like a small ritual,
read your name as if it were a map I could fold and unfold.

I sent a message that said nothing urgent—just a line

to test the channel—and you answered with a single emoji,
a small lighthouse in the dark.

Knowing it was the right decision did not arrive
as a thunderclap. It came as a series of small confirmations:
the way your laugh fit the sentence, the steadiness of your typing,
the way you remembered a detail I had not meant to keep.

Friendship began as a practical exchange—digits, time, a plan—

and then, quietly, as a new grammar for how I would speak of myself.