After You Drop Her Off

You drop her off and the truck goes quiet before you clear the block. Your phone sits face down on the seat. At the table you were easy, and you walked her to the door where a neighbor might have been watching. Now the street is empty. The cheap thought shows up fast. You could turn the night into a story, or go cold in a text, because no one is left to score your tone. The date did not end at the door.

Yahweh said the alone was not good, and He did not answer it with an audience. He made a helper comparable to the man. Comparable. Not a mood you borrow until the apartment feels less empty, and not a win you collect when someone asks how it went. You have treated the quiet like a problem she should fix, and treated her like she only matters when a witness is nearby. God made her fit to stand beside a man, which means the cab is the place your character is telling the truth.

The cost is the story you do not tell and the cold you do not send. You do not get to be kind on the step and smaller once the light is off. Yahweh already saw the man alone, and He did not give him a woman to talk down once the street was empty. Mercy is not softness about that. Mercy is that you are seen, and you are not past being made into one man. The street can be empty. Your mouth still answers to Him.