he still warms my side of the bed

Twenty two years, and on cold nights he still gets into my side of the bed ten minutes before I come up, then rolls over to his own side without a word about it. He reads with the lamp angled away so the light will not touch my pillow. Downstairs the kettle clicks itself off, the radiators tick through their old argument, and his glasses will end up folded inside his book by midnight, page lost, every single time.

I never asked him to start and he has never once mentioned it, in twenty two years. If you want to know what love looks like from the far side, it is a warm patch of bed and a lamp turned away.