The Slow Arithmetic of Love

We don't say I love you anymore. We say: your phone is at eleven percent. We say: I picked up the thing for your knee. We say: there's soup. I used to think this was a lesser language, a falling off from the time you'd write my name on the steam of the bathroom mirror or drive forty minutes for a specific pastry I'd mentioned once, in passing. But last night you got up at three because I coughed, and came back with water and didn't say a word— just set it on the nightstand and went back to sleep as if this were a thing that required no discussion, as if love at this stage were not a grand announcement but a glass of water, delivered in the dark, without being asked.