numbers keep me up at night

I'm coming to know sleepless nights better than the constellations of nerves on the back of my eyelids, but whether asleep or awake there's always one thing remaining constant... more constant than Planck--and even though I hate physics I'm still trying to make 6.626x10^(-34) mean something to you.

Days become numbers that quickly turn into years and I'm trying to calculate the past but I'm afraid to think about 104 weeks in the future, even though we've already survived 208 that we can still see clearly in the rearview.  Those numbers don't mean much to you, but you don't know that it took me 3 months to build up the nerve to say hello, and you sure as hell don't know the strength it's going to take me to say goodbye in 3 more.

Because in the middle of the night you have me thinking about how red, white, and blue look different sometimes, and how you never wear skinny ties and I wonder if that will change.
I'm thinking about the smell of the sidewalk and the way your eyes stand out when it rains.
All the times I laughed till I couldn't breathe and you were the only one to blame.
the days I spent smiling
the days you spent beaming
the nights we spent laughing
and the mornings I woke up dreaming.
Freezing water and bright lights--
walking by myself, but you were on my mind.
And lately I have a hard time hearing what you have to say
because all I can hear is the clock ticking every time you open your mouth,
reminding me how hard it's going to be to walk away.

But I will do it for you.

For the same reason that I don't push you when you say you have to be on time for curfew, or why I've never said the words building up inside me over the last four years.

Maybe I'm afraid, or maybe I'm patient
Maybe I'm a coward, or maybe I'm lenient

Because even though I know now is not the time,
sometimes I wonder if in two, three, four years down the line
if you'll follow your heart to me, because something tells me
the maps of our hearts will someday reach the same destination--
even if just for a moment.

But maybe I'm wrong. 
Maybe the day you set foot on that plane
is the day everything I've ever felt will be gone.

Still, in this moment in the middle of night
I have sleepless eyes
and I'm tossed in a knot of sheets
I can't stop counting
and I'm not counting sheep
Memories flash of the Michael Buble Christmas Album playing in the back seat of my family's suburban, and the deck of cards you scattered all around my kitchen, and frozen fingers, and the Costa Vida parking lot at 2am, and trying to solve quadratic equations, and the night my hazard lights turned into warning signs. I can't forget the night we talked on the phone to make sure you made it all the way home, and how you spent another hour parked in your garage to talk a little longer. You'll never know how happy I was on Christmas Eve of '11, or how much it meant to me the night you came over in June of '13. You'll never know how hard it's going to be in the fall of '15, but maybe it will make more sense in the autumn of '17.

Because even though I know waiting is going to be hard for me,
maybe some time apart will do something good for you.