First Morning

I woke before you and did nothing about it. The radiator ticked. Your shoulder rose and fell. A pigeon on the ledge outside was working through some problem of its own. I studied your ear—a thing I'd never thought to find beautiful— its strange, particular curl, the way the light turned it almost translucent, like a leaf held up to the sun. In the kitchen, your shoes sat next to mine in a way that mine had never sat with anyone's: easily. Without planning. I made coffee for two and the second cup changed the shape of my entire morning, the way a door changes a wall— not by filling it but by making the wall make sense.