The buzz of your beard trimmer before we go to bed isthe closest I come to cricket song. The kind that kept me up at night when at eleven and twelve and thirteen years old I didn't dream of someday sharing my bed with an (extra)ordinary man, but an elf.

We read together, stealing half hours from sleep as I once bribed my mother, promising just one more chapter before lights out. This is a chapter in our own lives coming to a close: your breath white noise I follow soundlessly to sleep; our baby squirming in my belly between us when we try to make love, before us in every future we might occupy. Until your whiskers shake out sparse and gray, and I haven't the bone strength to make babies anymore.