the four am phone call

it’s four hours since stumbling shocked and sockless nightdress tucked into jeans head aching with fear and sleep four hours less nine minutes since seeing flashing blue and sprinting up your driveway like it’s a scripted movie hunched on the veranda with dew seeping at my cuffs an open window between us lets out the dark in the pre-dawn dim of day I kept looking for signs in the design of the stars in the dissolving weight of sky