You dozed off next to me last evening,
and I gazed with wonder at a face
so often marked by the weight of
twenty years of sadness and abuse -
a face that, in that moment, held
a slight smile resting beneath
fluttering whisps of pastel-brown eyelashes curling up toward
frosted windows hidden by
blinds drawn close to
shut out the
eyes of a
world
that, in that moment,
was not mine, because
my world was there in that
quiet room, amongst the
continuous hum of a radiator and the
rise and fall of a fragile chest
I promised to protect.