Upon coming home to an empty house
Three months in; wife and baby out of town for the first time and, at last, a chance to get some rest after this endless drain. But was it ever this quiet before? Without the white noise machine muffling the cries and sighs and sleeping laughs? I now stumble without the night light. The room had never been this dark. Crawling into a bed devoid of competition, I stretch full out. I roll over until I’ve found the coveted middle, but end up lost in the cold, cotton endless; wistful for the bodies and edges by which I have come to measure myself.