We sit watching scary movies that make us laugh so hard we lean on each other with careless disregard because you can’t squeeze your heart into foolish small spaces and I can just be myself. We laugh until I can’t breathe, until you fill my lungs with a whisper of your joy and I inhale the scent of happiness. I lay beside you as the hour grows late and spoon you because I like it, maybe more than you do, a warm snuggle where I lay my head in loving you because your days are too long and mine are stretched too thin to hold it all together. So I tickle you silly, my cold fingers reaching up to your armpits because I told you that it’s the warmest part of your 8-year-old body, while you fight me with giggles and squeals in the arsenal of your love. I smile gently because neither of us believes such silliness since the warmest part has always been your heart, and I cleave to the vain hope that you’ll never outgrow our nightly “cold-cold” snuggles. The world may have stretched farther apart, threads in a tapestry no longer tethered together and desperate for a normalcy that’s already been replaced. But I cling to my heartbeats, each one pulsing with memories that aren’t tainted with just fear. ***