when I was still small

The drive back from my aunt's always ended after dark, and I always meant to stay awake for it. The highway lights came through the window in slow orange stripes, the radio turned down to almost nothing, my parents talking in the front in the low voices they saved for night driving, words I never caught and never needed to.

I used to pretend to be asleep when we pulled in, so my dad would carry me up the stairs. I think he knew. He carried me anyway, every single time, and to this day I have never slept as well as I slept in the back of that car at nine years old.