I like to watch Nate sleep.  Here he is, hand curled around the bars of the headboard; it looks like he’s about to make a prison break in his sleep. I think about raking a metal cup across the bars; then decide against it.

He’s stretched out on the couch, empty cider cup and folded glasses on the glass coffee table. “Do you want to go to bed, or do want me to leave you alone,” I ask. “Leave me alone,” he mumbles, and shifts an arm over his eyes.

He is as horizontal as horizontal can be, lying on the decaying reclined Eames chair. Tablet on lap, water glass on adjacent chair. He’s closed his eyes behind his librarian glasses and is at peace.

We are in bed. He mock-throws three pillows at me, one after another. “There. Enough pillows for you?  Pillow monger.” he says.

When we courted and he was in one city, I, another, we would call every night at 10pm and write notes several times a week. He has one from that time tucked in the corner of our dresser mirror:  a stick figure of me in the middle and a pillow fort on all three sides. Only my feet can escape. “This is me without you” I wrote underneath.

I still build pillow forts but now the open side is the one he’s on. I have trouble doing that emotionally. I’m all tap dance and skitter around my friends; “I’ll entertain you!  Here are my stories!”  I’m in, and then I’m out; no more than three minutes of their time.  That doesn’t, and shouldn’t, work for Nate. I’m trying to move around the pillow fort in my heart. My feet don’t need to be free. I don’t need to escape.