I found my latest potential lover on a barstool in a place where drinks come cheap, and laughs come cheaper. We smiled. I found hope in their sly charm. But then they looked away at their phone and my heart sank and I wondered:
Will love be or never be?
I'm always looking and searching and talking and flirting.
Love is a numbers game
You meet one
You meet another.
They don't blend in a blur. They are each one of them a separate point in a pointillism picture. And I have to decide where the soul mate sits among a maze of dots.
I don't think of human beings as dots, of course. I certainly don't frame my future betrothed as a point.
Nonetheless …
Love is a numbers game.
I shuffle the cards.
I roll the dice.
I have no poker face.
I'm hoping to hit a blackjack, to hear "jackpot," to see the slots roll 777. But this is just another rude way of thinking about love and lust in the desert, in a gambling city where strangers mingle, where love is a jingle, and I'm always singing its tune:
"Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?"
When I was young, I saw a movie with a song which pops into my head at random, it goes:
"Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight, someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight."
Where is my lover now?
Why are they not with me?
Have they not heard this song?
Love is a numbers game, and I place my bet on the roulette, and I watch the wheel spin 'round, waiting for my luck to hit.
Why is there not a bridge of lighting arching across the universe between them and me, between me and them, zapping us together?
Why does it take so long for our numbers to pair?
You'd think the universe would be kind enough to solve this puzzle, so that we, the lovers, fit together at last, so we can laugh about the other broken puzzles we've shaken into pieces scattered in a box under the bed.
I'm keeping my home clean.
I make the bed every day.
There's food in the fridge.
The sinks are clean.
There's one toothbrush.
In the scene of my home, there awaits a second toothbrush, extra slippers, more pajamas, pretty smells, the call of love and nurturing and laughs and passion and intimacy and pillows and sleep and comfort and waking and coffee and mornings on the porch, and evenings on the balcony, while hummingbirds sing in the tree in the yard, and the sunshine rises and the sunshine sets in our eyes, in the future.
Love is a numbers game, my love, come find me, quick as you can.
