Sun enters through the window and falls across the bed at a speed that can only be approached.
She is finally sleeping while the shadows from the blinds paint her body at oblique angles.
Dust, floating, alights like a thousand tiny fireflies and disappears.
I sit watching this with something akin to obsession.

I have come to realize that every part of me resides within her swelling lungs.
Each rise and fall is an omen.
A clock ticking backwards to the moment of my unraveling.

On the floor below the shelf sits an album full of photographs.
smiling family. champagne. a dance.
A fraction of a second where light was captured.
Their story is incomplete and completely false.

Here in our bedroom, the sun lending her these ridiculous zebra stripes,
I find confusion and an ending with more loss than could possibly be worth it.