Just One Place

As he stands in the doorway about to put his housemate’s cat out, he cradles it in his arms and whispers something unintelligible into the scruff of her neck and you think, “I love this man,” then find yourself biting down on your tongue to keep back tears. Love, for him, has become a dirty word. Later, you wake up at three twenty-seven in the morning and the door is closed now, slivers of light shoving their way through the cracks, struggling across the floorboards, not quite making it to the bed. Many things are not allowed here, and you drift back into sleep, into a dream, where you are someplace else. You are always someplace else.