What I Keep

He doesn't know I keep a list. Not on paper—in the body, in the part that doesn't forget. The time he drove four hours in a storm because I said the word lonely once, and only once, and he heard it the way animals hear frequencies we've told ourselves don't exist. The way he builds a fire like a man composing a letter: carefully, with structure, as if the warmth had to be earned one log at a time. The way he sleeps—half on his side, one arm reaching into my half of the bed like a bridge that doesn't know it's a bridge. He thinks he is ordinary. He says this sometimes when the news is full of extraordinary men. I let him believe it. It's the kindest lie I know— letting someone be ordinary when what they are is the entire architecture of your daily life and you'd collapse without a single wall.