A Stranger Entered Our Bedroom Every Night Until I Learned Why
I put my face in both hands and cried like someone much younger. Elena laughed and cried simultaneously in the way I had first heard on the back porch, the sound of two things that should not be able to exist in the same breath existing together.
We drove home. Sonia ran at us from the door so fast she nearly knocked Elena backward. We ordered takeout we did not need to justify with anything. We let the evening be loud and messy and grateful and we did not try to make it into anything more significant than what it was: an ordinary evening that had been earned by surviving months of extraordinary ones.
A few nights later, Sonia appeared in our doorway in her pajamas. She looked at both of us and asked the question that completed the circle.
No more man at night?
I looked at Elena. She was smiling, tired and real.
No more man at night, I told Sonia. Just us.
She considered this with the seriousness she brought to all important information. Then she padded back down the hallway to her room with her rabbit tucked under her arm, satisfied.
I stood there for a while after she was gone, watching the hallway stay empty.
Sometimes I still wake around one in the morning. I see the line of light moving across the floor. The door opening. The shadow stepping inside. I feel the whole architecture of that night reassemble itself in my chest for a moment before I remember the order of what came after.
