In a dark room I will tally them on my fingers, what I can save up and keep from today. Well today we went to a new cafe and one of us spilled the coffee in a wide muddy swath. That's another one we can't go back to. Or today I brought you a broken daffodil or today you did our laundry and it was the first time it had been Our Laundry. Or tonight was the first time bed had just meant sleep, and our air around each other is newly content and there are fewer words and it is perfect because we have begun to understand each other. We could not betray all our shared secrets if we tried; there is no way to recreate this day for outsiders because it only happened once, and only for us. We got to swim in it, we are charmed and chosen. All these things I put in the bank.

Sleeping your hair and your face are doing things you wouldn't knowingly let them do. You are foreign, you are beautiful, you half wake up and ask what is the matter, you mumble What are you doing.

Keeping you safe I say, and my eyes may or may not fill with tears because we are living on such rationed time and every piece of it is too valuable to sleep through. This is not fear of time passing, don't misunderstand. That used to be it but now this is an optimistic drive to collect all the moments of you I can steal up. I will see what I can weave them into and see if that fabric will hold for a long long time. You won't realize what's happening; you will go back to sleep curled toward me. I have given myself a chill over the sleepy planes of you. That's how I like it. I will keep watching; you sleep.

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