Forty Minutes between Us

For nine years the road was the shape of us. Forty minutes of two‑lane highway through deep East Texas—pines and radio static, no curb, no city lights—no wifi, became the familiar. Loving him was never the hard part. Keeping us - required ritual, repetition, and a refusal to let absence become silence.

We treated time like currency and learned to budget it. Friday arrival was a single line—Poppy I'm so glad you're here—that ended the scramble and started the weekend. Saturday had a sacred hour—no phones, no nothing—where we talked about everything that mattered. Each day of the week we had a check‑in for logistics (((Logistics in a relationship means managing the practical, day-to-day planning and coordination of life together, like finances, chores, schedules, and household tasks, often called the mental load It's about organizing the how and when of daily life, from scheduling doctor's appointments and planning meals to coordinating finances and organizing things, ensuring everything runs smoothly so love and intimacy can thrive, rather than becoming overwhelmed by the mundane.))) With our feelings so small, resentments never had room to grow. Those calls were not filler. They were the backbone of nine years - our anthem - our safety - because we were determined to stay together.

My camper’s bedroom was our sanctuary: a mattress, a lamp, a window that framed the door like a private film. He’d arrive and I’d sit—cross‑legged, knees touching his—talking until the sky changed. We were so happy! Those nights were endless in the best way: conversations that began with nothing and turned into plans, confessions that rearranged us, jokes that became our framework for support. My sharpness met his steadiness and softened. My camper bed was where we practiced patience and named needs that wouldn’t fit in a hurried phone call.

We compressed intimacy into hours. Our lovemaking was phenomenal and it's like he always knew my body from day one. I reached heights that I didn't know existed. It is the type of lovemaking you envision when you think of your forever person and let me tell you at fifty two years when we met in 2016 he brought the BAD GIRL out of me!

Moving in April 2024 felt like the accumulation of nine years of practice. Boxes became furniture, the coffee's drip threaded our mornings, and the camper mattress came inside as a corner of memory and comfort. Ordinary acts—making coffee, folding shirts, learning how to read his smiles—stacked into a kind of miracle.

Then May 8 arrived and our world fell apart as we knew it. He was rearrested from the previous charge. He was going to prison and it hit me hard. The months moved slowly and while doing something with his Amazon acct like he wanted me to do, I had to go back and forth from his Amazon account to his email associated with his account. I then found messages from him and to him from many someones on Craigslist in September 2024 and felt the floor go out from under me. He, after I found videos, he admitted there had been an slight attachment—an act that crept in where it should not have. His words were honest and fumbling; they did not erase the ache. The sound of my body rejecting the taste of what had been done to me. I needed to know whether the person who loved me would choose me when proximity made choice possible. That question cut sharper than any accusation. It was soon to be answered.

His arrest on May 8 rearranged everything. The rituals didn’t vanish; they were repurposed into survival. Where once we crossed a county line to close the distance, now I crossed lines of work and shame to keep a voice alive on the other end of a payphone. Money on books, minutes on the phone, stamps for letters—these became the new familiar for me! Still, we loved long distance -

Family lines frayed. His son and daughter stepped away first, their patience exhausted by whatever they'd been told before and whatever followed. Their aunt's made sure they believed the little lies that they told them. His sisters then folded like paper, their loyalty replaced by distance.

Abandonment arrived not as a single blow but as a series of small exits: missed calls that were never returned, visits that stopped, relatives who stopped answering. The absence of them made the load heavier. I was left carrying the heaviness of care alone. I would do it again, in a heartbeat. How dare they all treated him like they did. They showed no respect at any time to their father or their brother.

We didn’t arrive at a single verdict. Some things were mended; others remained raw. The nine years of nightly calls and sacred hours did not vanish. They became the soil from which I would grow—less dependent on distance as an excuse and more rooted in the work of being and improving myself. I tried to be responsible, as Stephen wanted me to be but I fell short but he's never told me that however, I feel I do fall short sometimes. I just keep striving until I, hopefully get it right. Stephen handles my mental disorders of ADHD and autism.

Hustling is an old verb in my dictionary. I try to work each before dawn and end after sun comes up. I sell things I thought I would never sell. I learn the exact amount that buys an hour of his voice and the exact amount that keeps the lights on so the call doesn’t drop. Groceries, a deposit for commissary, the prepaid electricity balance—each line item is a decision that decides whether we speak that day.

I budget tenderness like a line item—three calls a day, sometimes four—because conversation is currency and silence is a debt I cannot afford. We schedule like surgeons. Morning is a check‑in; midday is a longer unpacking of small emergencies; night is the hour we try to pretend the distance is a thin curtain. He reads letters aloud; I send love, cards, and the smell of the page in words.

This prison wife life is not for the weak of heart. It demands stamina and keeping up with who you've spoken with and about what, a willingness to make love into the normal. It asks for steadiness that is not the same as forgiveness; it is the work of choosing to keep a person in your life while also keeping yourself intact, especially mentally. Can I hold him down for ever how long he stays locked up, hopefully not long? Can I really stay with him after betrayal and can I really trust him again? My answer: "A million times, yesssssss I can be faithful and loyal to my man. He's the first good man I ever dated. Stephen "gets me" unlike anyone else in this entire outer space. It's been hell, I'm not going to lie but he's worth everything I give him now which is all of me and have over the past decade since we met.

We met in June 2016 and from that summer on, we built a life out of small, repeatable practices. Every weekend we saw each other because would drive every Friday evening to see me, forty minutes away—no exceptions. Some week nights it was a slow, hour-long call before bed; other nights it was two or three quick check-ins: a voice note at lunch, a five-minute catch-up after work, a last-thing-before-sleep whisper. Those calls were not filler. They were the backbone of nine years. They were where we traded the weather of our days, aired tiny grievances before they hardened, sketched plans, and kept the essense of tenderness balanced. We have never argued to this present day in 2026.

There is an edge to every day now, a sense that something is always about to change. Maybe calls will thin and letters will thicken; maybe a transfer or a court date will rewrite our map. Maybe the tides will turn and we will learn a new familiar of presence that survives bars and meters. Maybe the exits of his children and sisters will be permanent, or maybe they will return when the shape of things shifts. If the latter happens, he's already said that they left him when he needed them the most and he's done, he says. I know he was hurt and being behind bars made it just a lot more difficult. My heart breaks for him.

For now I keep the coffee brewing, the prepaid balance topped, the small rituals intact. I am learning how to be both the person who hustles for minutes and the person who refuses to let those minutes be all I am. I am doing my best to get him released through MRIS if he qualifies because he'd had a cerebral hemmorige before originally arrested and AI said he qualifies for MRIS but I've sent Stephen a step by step of what he needs to do and what I need to do to push it along. The Board of Pardon and Parole need to approve him for MRIS but it's crazy they don't tell them about this MRIS, I just happened to bring it up during my research.

This is the most hope I've ever had that he will be released early but even if he was released on his parole hearing date, that would be fine with us both.

We are so much in love and we absolutely love with an unconditional magical true and pure love that's totally beyond love and as we fiercely continue to love long distance - against all odds!

written by:

Melodie Michelle

m§m

01/10/2026